He had hardly come into his study when his wife entered with a strange look, breathing quick and short; she closed the door, and stood near it, looking at him apprehensively.

"George," she said, rather sharply and nervously, "you must not be vexed with me, but——"

"Well?" he said heavily, and the warmth died out of his heart. He knew something terrible impended.

"I have done it for the best," she said, and obstinacy and a kind of impatient tenderness strove in her eyes as she looked at him. "You must show yourself a man; it is not fitting that loose ladies of the Court should mock—" He got up; and his eyes were determined too.

"Tell me what you have done, woman," he cried.

She put out her hand as if to hold him still, and her voice rang hard and thin.

"I will say my say," she said. "It is not for that that I have done it. But you are a Gospel-minister, and must be faithful. The Justice is here. I sent for him."

"The Justice?" he said blankly; but his heart was beating heavily in his throat.

"Mr. Frankland from East Grinsted, with a couple of pursuivants and a company of servants. There is a popish agent at the Hall, and they are come to take him."

The Rector swallowed with difficulty once or twice, and then tried to speak, but she went on. "And I have promised that you shall take them in by the side door."

"I will not!" he cried.

She held up her hand again for silence, and glanced round at the door.

"I have given him the key," she said.

This was the private key, possessed by the incumbent for generations past, and Sir Nicholas had not withdrawn it from the Protestant Rector.

"There is no choice," she said. "Oh! George, be a man!" Then she turned and slipped out.

He stood perfectly still for a moment; his pulses were racing; he could not think. He sat down and buried his face in his hands; and gradually his brain cleared and quieted. Then he realised what it meant, and his soul rose in blind furious resentment. This was the last straw; it was the woman's devilish jealousy. But what could he do? The Justice was here. Could he warn his friends? He clenched his fingers into his hair as the situation came out clear and hard before his brain. Dear God, what could he do?

There were footsteps in the flagged hall, and he raised his head as the door opened and a portly gentleman in riding-dress came in, followed by Mrs. Dent. The Rector rose confusedly, but could not speak, and his eyes wandered round to his wife again and again as she took a chair in the shadow and sat down. But the magistrate noticed nothing.

"Aha!" he said, beaming, "You have a wife, sir, that is a jewel. Solomon never spoke a truer word; an ornament to her husband, he said, I think; but you as a minister should know better than I, a mere layman"; and his face creased with mirth.

What did the red-faced fool mean? thought the Rector. If only he would not talk so loud! He must think, he must think. What could he do?

"She was very brisk, sir," the magistrate went on, sitting down, and the Rector followed his example, sitting too with his back to the window and his hand to his head.

Then Mr. Frankland went on with his talk; and the man sat there, still glancing from time to time mechanically towards his wife, who was there in the shadow with steady white face and hands in her lap, watching the two men. The magistrate's voice seemed to the bewildered man to roll on like a wheel over stones; interminable, grinding, stupefying. What was he saying? What was that about his wife? She had sent to him the day before, had she, and told him of the popish agent's coming?—Ah! A dangerous man was he, a spreader of seditious pamphlets? At least they supposed he was the man.—Yes, yes, he understood; these fly-by-nights were threateners of the whole commonwealth; they must be hunted out like vermin—just so; and he as a minister of the Gospel should be the first to assist.—Just so, he agreed with all his heart, as a minister of the Gospel. (Yes, but, dear Lord, what was he to do? This fat man with the face of a butcher must not be allowed to—) Ah! what was that? He had missed that. Would Mr. Frankland be so good as to say it again? Yes, yes, he understood now; the men were posted already. No one suspected anything; they had come by the bridle path.—Every door? Did he understand that every door of the Hall was watched? Ah! that was prudent; there was no chance then of any one sending a warning in? Oh, no, no, he did not dream for a moment that there was any concealed Catholic who would be likely to do such a thing. But he only wondered.—Yes, yes, the magistrate was right; one could not be too careful. Because—ah!—What was that about Sir Nicholas? Yes, yes, indeed he was a good landlord, and very popular in the village.—Ah! just so; it had better be done quietly, at the side door. Yes, that was the one which the key fitted. But, but, he thought perhaps, he had better not come in, because Sir Nicholas was his friend, and there was no use in making bad blood.—Oh! not to the house; very well, then, he would come as far as the yew hedge at—at what time did the magistrate say? At half-past eight; yes, that would be best as Mr. Frankland said, because Sir Nicholas had ordered the horses for nine o'clock; so they would come upon them just at the right time.—How many men, did Mr. Frankland say? Eight? Oh yes, eight and himself, and—he did not quite follow the plan. Ah! through the yew hedge on to the terrace and through the south door into the hall; then if they bolted—they? Surely he had understood the magistrate to say there was only one? Oh! he had not understood that. Sir Nicholas too? But why, why? Good God, as a harbourer of priests?—No, but this fellow was an agent, surely. Well, if the magistrate said so, of course he was right; but he would have thought himself that Sir Nicholas might have been left—ah! Well, he would say no more. He quite saw the magistrate's point now.—No, no, he was no favourer; God forbid! his wife would speak for him as to that; Marion would bear witness.—Well, well, he thanked the magistrate for his compliments, and would he proceed with the plan? By the south door, he was saying, yes, into the hall.—Yes, the East room was Sir Nicholas' study; or of course they might be supping upstairs. But it made no difference; no, the magistrate was right about that. So long as they held the main staircase, and had all the other doors watched, they were safe to have him.—No, no, the cloister wing would not be used; they might leave that out of their calculations. Besides, did not the magistrate say that Marion had seen the lights in the East wing last night? Yes, well, that settled it.—And the signal? Oh, he had not caught that; the church bell, was it to be? But what for? Why did they need a signal? Ah! he understood, for the advance at half-past eight.—Just so, he would send Thomas up to ring it. Would Marion kindly see to that?—Yes, indeed, his wife was a woman to be proud of; such a faithful Protestant; no patience with these seditious rogues at all. Well, was that all? Was there anything else?—Yes, how dark it was getting; it must be close on eight o'clock. Thomas had gone, had he? That was all right.—And had the men everything they wanted?—Well, yes; although the village did go to bed early it would perhaps be better to have no lights; because there was no need to rouse suspicion.—Oh! very well; perhaps it would be better for Mr. Frankland to go and sit with the men and keep them quiet. And his wife would go, too, just to make sure they had all they wanted.—Very well, yes; he would wait here in the dark until he was called. Not more than a quarter of an hour? Thank you, yes.—

Then the door had closed; and the man, left alone, flung himself down in his chair, and buried his face again in his arms.

Ah! what was to be done? Nothing, nothing, nothing. And there they were at the Hall, his neighbours and friends. The kind old Catholic and his ladies! How would he ever dare to meet their eyes again? But what could be done? Nothing!

How far away the afternoon seems; that quiet sunny walk beneath the pines. His friend is at his books, no doubt, with the silver candles, and the open pages, and his own neat manuscript growing under his white scholarly fingers. And Isabel; at her needlework before the fire.—How peaceful and harmless and sweet it all is! And down there, not fifty yards away, is the village; every light out by now; and the children and parents, too, asleep.—Ah! what will the news be when they wake to-morrow?—And that strange talk this afternoon, of the Saviour and His Cup of pain, and the squalor and indignity of the Passion! Ah! yes, he could suffer with Jesus on the Cross, so gladly, on that Tree of Life—but not with Judas on the Tree of Death!

And the minister dropped his face lower, over the edge of his desk; and the hot tears of misery and self-reproach and impotence began to run. There was no help, no help anywhere. All were against him—even his wife herself; and his Lord.

Then with a moan he lifted his hot face into the dusk.

"Jesus," he cried in his soul, "Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee."

There came a tapping on the door; and the door opened an inch.

"It is time," whispered his wife's voice.



CHAPTER VIII

THE TAKING OF MR. STEWART

They were still sitting over the supper-table at the Hall. The sun had set about the time they had begun, and the twilight had deepened into dark; but they had not cared to close the shutters as they were to move so soon. The four candles shone out through the windows, and there still hung a pale glimmer outside owing to the refraction of light from the white stones of the terrace. Beyond on the left there sloped away a high black wall of impenetrable darkness where the yew hedge stood; over that was the starless sky. Sir Nicholas' study was bright with candlelight, and the lace and jewels of Lady Maxwell (for her sister wore none) added a vague pleasant sense of beauty to Mr. Stewart's mind; for he was one who often fared coarsely and slept hard. He sighed a little to himself as he looked out over this shining supper-table past the genial smiling face of Sir Nicholas to the dark outside; and thought how in less than an hour he would have left the comfort of this house for the grey road and its hardships again. It was extraordinarily sweet to him (for he was a man of taste and a natural inclination to luxury) to stay a day or two now and again at a house like this and mix again with his own equals, instead of with the rough company of the village inn, or the curious foreign conspirators with their absence of educated perception and their doubtful cleanliness. He was a man of domestic instincts and good birth and breeding, and would have been perfectly at his ease as the master of some household such as this; with a chapel and a library and a pleasant garden and estate; spending his days in great leisure and good deeds. And instead of all this, scarcely by his own choice but by what he would have called his vocation, he was partly an exile living from hand to mouth in lodgings and inns, and when he was in his own fatherland, a hunted fugitive lurking about in unattractive disguises. He sighed again once or twice. There was silence a moment or two.

There sounded one note from the church tower a couple of hundred yards away. Lady Maxwell heard it, and looked suddenly up; she scarcely knew why, and caught her sister's eyes glancing at her. There was a shade of uneasiness in them.

"It is thundery to-night," said Sir Nicholas. Mr. Stewart did not speak. Lady Maxwell looked up quickly at him as he sat on her right facing the window; and saw an expression of slight disturbance cross his face. He was staring out on to the quickly darkening terrace, past Sir Nicholas, who with pursed lips and a little frown was stripping off his grapes from the stalk. The look of uneasiness deepened, and the young man half rose from his chair, and sat down again.

"What is it, Mr. Stewart?" said Lady Maxwell, and her voice had a ring of terror in it. Sir Nicholas looked up quickly.

"Eh, eh?"—he began.

The young man rose up and recoiled a step, still staring out.

"I beg your pardon," he said, "but I have just seen several men pass the window."

There was a rush of footsteps and a jangle of voices outside in the hall; and as the four rose up from table, looking at one another, there was a rattle at the handle outside, the door flew open, and a ruddy strongly-built man stood there, with a slightly apprehensive air, and holding a loaded cane a little ostentatiously in his hand; the faces of several men looked over his shoulder.

Sir Nicholas' ruddy face had paled, his mouth was half open with dismay, and he stared almost unintelligently at the magistrate. Mr. Stewart's hand closed on the handle of a knife that lay beside his plate.

"In the Queen's name," said Mr. Frankland, and looked from the knife to the young man's white determined face, and down again. A little sobbing broke from Lady Maxwell.

"It is useless, sir," said the magistrate; "Sir Nicholas, persuade your guest not to make a useless resistance; we are ten to one; the house has been watched for hours."

Sir Nicholas took a step forward, his mouth closed and opened again. Lady Maxwell took a swift rustling step from behind the table, and threw her arm round the old man's neck. Still none of them spoke.

"Come in," said the magistrate, turning a little. The men outside filed in, to the number of half a dozen, and two or three more were left in the hall. All were armed. Mistress Margaret who had stood up with the rest, sat down again, and rested her head on her hand; apparently completely at her ease.

"I must beg pardon, Lady Maxwell," he went on, "but my duty leaves me no choice." He turned to the young man, who, on seeing the officers had laid the knife down again, and now stood, with one hand on the table, rather pale, but apparently completely self-controlled, looking a little disdainfully at the magistrate.

Then Sir Nicholas made a great effort; but his face twitched as he spoke, and the hand that he lifted to his wife's arm shook with nervousness, and his voice was cracked and unnatural.

"Sit down, my dear, sit down.—What is all this?—I do not understand.—Mr. Frankland, sir, what do you want of me?—And who are all these gentlemen?—Won't you sit down, Mr. Frankland and take a glass of wine. Let me make Mr. Stewart known to you." And he lifted a shaking hand as if to introduce them.

The magistrate smiled a little on one side of his mouth.

"It is no use, Sir Nicholas," he said, "this gentleman, I fear, is well known to some of us already.—No, no, sir," he cried sharply, "the window is guarded."

Mr. Stewart, who had looked swiftly and sideways across at the window, faced the magistrate again.

"I do not know what you mean, sir," he said. "It was a lad who passed the window."

There was a movement outside in the hall; and the magistrate stepped to the door.

"Who is there?" he cried out sharply.

There was a scuffle, and a cry of a boy's voice; and a man appeared, holding Anthony by the arm.

Mistress Margaret turned round in her seat; and said in a perfectly natural voice, "Why, Anthony, my lad!"

There was a murmur from one or two of the men.

"Silence," called out the magistrate. "We will finish the other affair first," and he made a motion to hold Anthony for a moment.—"Now then, do any of you men know this gentleman?"

A pursuivant stepped out.

"Mr. Frankland, sir; I know him under two names—Mr. Chapman and Mr. Wode. He is a popish agent. I saw him in the company of Dr. Storey in Antwerp, four months ago."

Mr. Stewart blew out his lips sharply and contemptuously.

"Pooh," he said; and then turned to the man and bowed ironically.

"I congratulate you, my man," he said, in a tone of bitter triumph. "In April I was in France. Kindly remember this man's words, Mr. Frankland; they will tell in my favour. For I presume you mean to take me."

"I will remember them," said the magistrate.

Mr. Stewart bowed to him; he had completely regained his composure. Then he turned to Sir Nicholas and Lady Maxwell, who had been watching in a bewildered silence.

"I am exceedingly sorry," he said, "for having brought this annoyance on you, Lady Maxwell; but these men are so sharp that they see nothing but guilt everywhere. I do not know yet what my crime is. But that can wait. Sir Nicholas, we should have parted anyhow in half an hour. We shall only say good-bye here, instead of at the door."

The magistrate smiled again as before; and half put up his hand to hide it.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Chapman; but you need not part from Sir Nicholas yet. I fear, Sir Nicholas, that I shall have to trouble you to come with us."

Lady Maxwell drew a quick hissing breath; her sister got up swiftly and went to her, as she sat down in Sir Nicholas' chair, still holding the old man's hand.

Sir Nicholas turned to his guest; and his voice broke again and again as he spoke.

"Mr. Stewart," he said, "I am sorry that any guest of mine should be subject to these insults. However, I am glad that I shall have the pleasure of your company after all. I suppose we ride to East Grinsted," he added harshly to the magistrate, who bowed to him.—"Then may I have my servant, sir?"

"Presently," said Mr. Frankland, and then turned to Anthony, who had been staring wild-eyed at the scene, "Now who is this?"

A man answered from the rank.

"That is Master Anthony Norris, sir."

"Ah! and who is Master Anthony Norris? A Papist, too?"

"No, sir," said the man again, "a good Protestant; and the son of Mr. Norris at the Dower House."

"Ah!" said the magistrate again, judicially. "And what might you be wanting here, Master Anthony Norris?"

Anthony explained that he often came up in the evening, and that he wanted nothing. The magistrate eyed him a moment or two.

"Well, I have nothing against you, young gentleman. But I cannot let you go, till I am safely set out. You might rouse the village. Take him out till we start," he added to the man who guarded him.

"Come this way, sir," said the officer; and Anthony presently found himself sitting on the long oak bench that ran across the western end of the hall, at the foot of the stairs, and just opposite the door of Sir Nicholas' room where he had just witnessed that curious startling scene.

The man who had charge of him stood a little distance off, and did not trouble him further, and Anthony watched in silence.

The hall was still dark, except for one candle that had been lighted by the magistrate's party, and it looked sombre and suggestive of tragedy. Floor walls and ceiling were all dark oak, and the corners were full of shadows. A streak of light came out of the slightly opened door opposite, and a murmur of voices. The rest of the house was quiet; it had all been arranged and carried out without disturbance.

Anthony had a very fair idea of what was going forward; he knew of course that the Catholics were always under suspicion, and now understood plainly enough from the conversation he had heard that the reddish-haired young man, standing so alert and cheerful by the table in there, had somehow precipitated matters. Anthony himself had come up on some trifling errand, and had run straight into this affair; and now he sat and wondered resentfully, with his eyes and ears wide open.

There were men at all the inner doors now; they had slipped in from the outer entrances as soon as word had reached them that the prisoners were secured, and only a couple were left outside to prevent the alarm being raised in the village. These inner sentinels stood motionless at the foot of the stairs that rose up into the unlighted lobby overhead, at the door that led to the inner hall and the servants' quarters, and at those that led to the cloister wing and the garden respectively.

The murmur of voices went on in the room opposite; and presently a man slipped out and passed through the sentinels to the door leading to the kitchens and pantry; he carried a pike in his hand, and was armed with a steel cap and breast-piece. In a minute he had returned followed by Mr. Boyd, Sir Nicholas' body-servant; the two passed into the study—and a moment later the dark inner hall was full of moving figures and rustlings and whisperings, as the alarmed servants poured up from downstairs.

Then the study door opened again, and Anthony caught a glimpse of the lighted room; the two ladies with Sir Nicholas and his guest were seated at table; there was the figure of an armed man behind Mr. Stewart's chair, and another behind Lady Maxwell's; then the door closed again as Mr. Boyd with the magistrate and a constable carrying a candle came out.

"This way, sir," said the servant; and the three crossed the hall, and passing close by Anthony, went up the broad oak staircase that led to the upper rooms. Then the minutes passed away; from upstairs came the noise of doors opening and shutting, and footsteps passing overhead; from the inner hall the sound of low talking, and a few sobs now and again from a frightened maid; from Sir Nicholas' room all was quiet except once when Mr. Stewart's laugh, high and natural, rang out. Anthony thought of that strong brisk face he had seen in the candlelight; and wondered how he could laugh, with death so imminent—and worse than death; and a warmth of admiration and respect glowed at the lad's heart. The man by Anthony sighed and shifted his feet.

"What is it for?" whispered the lad at last.

"I mustn't speak to you, sir," said the man.

At last the footsteps overhead came to the top of the stairs. The magistrate's voice called out sharply and impatiently:

"Come along, come along"; and the three, all carrying bags and valises came downstairs again and crossed the hall. Again the door opened as they went in, leaving the luggage on the floor; and Anthony caught another glimpse of the four still seated round the table; but Sir Nicholas' head was bowed upon his hands.

Then again the door closed; and there was silence.

Once more it was flung open, and Anthony saw the interior of the room plainly. The four were standing up, Mr. Stewart was bowing to Lady Maxwell; the magistrate stood close beside him; then a couple of men stepped up to the young man's side as he turned away, and the three came out into the hall and stood waiting by the little heap of luggage. Mr. Frankland came next, with the man-servant close beside him, and the rest of the men behind; and the last closed the door and stood by it. There was a dead silence; Anthony sprang to his feet in uncontrollable excitement. What was happening? Again the door opened, and the men made room as Mistress Margaret came out, and the door shut.

She came swiftly across, with her little air of dignity and confidence, towards Anthony, who was standing forward.

"Why, Master Anthony," she said, "dear lad; I did not know they had kept you," and she took his hand.

"What is it, what is it?" he whispered sharply.

"Hush," she said; and the two stood together in silence.

The moments passed; Anthony could hear the quick thumping beat of his own heart, and the breathing of Mistress Margaret; but the hall was perfectly quiet, where the magistrate with the prisoner and his men stood in an irregular dark group with the candle behind them; and no sound came from the room beyond.

Then the handle turned, and a crack of light showed; but no further sound; then the door opened wide, a flood of light poured out and Sir Nicholas tottered into the hall.

"Margaret, Margaret," he cried. "Where are you? Go to her."

There was a strange moaning sound from the brightly lighted room. The old lady dropped Anthony's hand and moved swiftly and unfalteringly across, and once more the door closed behind her.

There was a sharp word of command from the magistrate, and the sentries from every door left their posts, and joined the group which, with Sir Nicholas and his guest and Mr. Boyd in the centre, now passed out through the garden door.

The magistrate paused as he saw Anthony standing there alone.

"I can trust you, young gentleman," he said, "not to give the alarm till we are gone?"

Anthony nodded, and the magistrate passed briskly out on to the terrace, shutting the door behind him; there was a rush of footsteps and a murmur of voices and the hall was filled with the watching servants.

As the chorus of exclamations and inquiries broke out, Anthony ran straight through the crowd to the garden door, and on to the terrace. They had gone to the left, he supposed, but he hesitated a moment to listen; then he heard the stamp of horses' feet and the jingle of saddlery, and saw the glare of torches through the yew hedge; and he turned quickly and ran along the terrace, past the flood of light that poured out from the supper room, and down the path that led to the side-door opposite the Rectory. It was very dark, and he stumbled once or twice; then he came to the two or three stairs that led down to the door in the wall, and turned off among the bushes, creeping on hands and feet till he reached the wall, low on this side, but deep on the other; and looked over.

The pursuivants with their men had formed a circle round the two prisoners, who were already mounted and who sat looking about them as the luggage was being strapped to their saddles before and behind; the bridles were lifted forward over the horses' heads, and a couple of the guard held each rein. The groom who had brought round the two horses for Mr. Stewart and himself stood white-faced and staring, with his back to the Rectory wall. The magistrate was just mounting at a little distance his own horse, which was held by the Rectory boy. Mr. Boyd, it seemed, was to walk with the men. Two or three torches were burning by now, and every detail was distinct to Anthony, as he crouched among the dry leaves and peered down on to the group just beneath.

Sir Nicholas' face was turned away from him; but his head was sunk on his breast, and he did not stir or lift it as his horse stamped at the strapping on of the valise Mr. Boyd had packed for him. Mr. Stewart sat erect and motionless, and his face as Anthony saw it was confident and fearless.

Then suddenly the door in the Rectory wall opposite was flung open, and a figure in flying black skirts, but hatless, rushed out and through the guard straight up to the old man's knee. There was a shout from the men and a movement to pull him off, but the magistrate who was on his horse and just outside the circle spoke sharply, and the men fell back.

"Oh, Sir Nicholas, Sir Nicholas," sobbed the minister, his face half buried in the saddle. Anthony saw his shoulders shaking, and his hands clutching at the old man's knee. "Forgive me, forgive me."

There was no answer from Sir Nicholas; he still sat unmoved, his chin on his breast, as the Rector sobbed and moaned at his stirrup.

"There, there," said the magistrate decidedly, over the heads of the guard, "that is enough, Mr. Dent"; and he made a motion with his hand.

A couple of men took the minister by the shoulders and drew him, still crying out to Sir Nicholas, outside the group; and he stood there dazed and groping with his hands. There was a word of command; and the guard moved off at a sharp walk, with the horses in the centre, and as they turned, the lad saw in the torchlight the old man's face drawn and wrinkled with sorrow, and great tears running down it.

The Rector leaned against his own wall, with his hands over his face; and Anthony looked at him with growing suspicion and terror as the flare of the torches on the trees faded, and the noise of the troop died away round the corner.



CHAPTER IX

VILLAGE JUSTICE

The village had never known such an awakening as on the morning that followed Sir Nicholas' arrest. Before seven o'clock every house knew it, and children ran half-dressed to the outlying hamlets to tell the story. Very little work was done that day, for the estate was disorganised; and the men had little heart for work; and there were groups all day on the green, which formed and re-formed and drifted here and there and discussed and sifted the evidence. It was soon known that the Rectory household had had a foremost hand in the affair. The groom, who had been present at the actual departure of the prisoners had told the story of the black figure that ran out of the door, and of what was cried at the old man's knee; and how he had not moved nor spoken in answer; and Thomas, the Rectory boy, was stopped as he went across the green in the evening and threatened and encouraged until he told of the stroke on the church-bell, and the Rectory key, and the little company that had sat all the afternoon in the kitchen over their ale. He told too how a couple of hours ago he had been sent across with a note to Lady Maxwell, and that it had been returned immediately unopened.

So as night fell, indignation had begun to smoulder fiercely against the minister, who had not been seen all day; and after dark had fallen the name "Judas" was cried in at the Rectory door half a dozen times, and a stone or two from the direction of the churchyard had crashed on the tiles of the house.

Mr. Norris had been up all day at the Hall, but he was the only visitor admitted. All day long the gate-house was kept closed, and the same message was given to the few horsemen and carriages that came to inquire after the truth of the report from the Catholic houses round, to the effect that it was true that Sir Nicholas and a friend had been taken off to London by the Justice from East Grinsted; and that Lady Maxwell begged the prayers of her friends for her husband's safe return.

Anthony had ridden off early with a servant, at his father's wish, to follow Sir Nicholas and learn any news of him that was possible, to do him any service he was able, and to return or send a message the next day down to Great Keynes; and early in the afternoon he returned with the information that Sir Nicholas was at the Marshalsea, that he was well and happy, that he sent his wife his dear love, and that she should have a letter from him before nightfall. He rode straight to the Hall with the news, full of chastened delight at his official importance, just pausing to tell a group that was gathered on the green that all was well so far, and was shown up to Lady Maxwell's own parlour, where he found her, very quiet and self-controlled, and extremely grateful for his kindness in riding up to London and back on her account. Anthony explained too that he had been able to get Sir Nicholas one or two comforts that the prison did not provide, a pillow and an extra coverlet and some fruit; and he left her full of gratitude.

His father had been up to see the ladies two or three times, and in spite of the difference in religion had prayed with them, and talked a little; and Lady Maxwell had asked that Isabel might come up to supper and spend the evening. Mr. Norris promised to send her up, and then added:

"I am a little anxious, Lady Maxwell, lest the people may show their anger against the Rector or his wife, about what has happened."

Lady Maxwell looked startled.

"They have been speaking of it all day long," he said, "they know everything; and it seems the Rector is not so much to blame as his wife. It was she who sent for the magistrate and gave him the key and arranged it all; he was only brought into it too late to interfere or refuse."

"Have you seen him?" asked the old lady.

"I have been both days," he said, "but he will not see me; he is in his study, locked in."

"I may have treated him hardly," she said, "I would not open his note; but at least he consented to help them against his friend." And her old eyes filled with tears.

"I fear that is so," said the other sadly.

"But speak to the people," she said, "I think they love my husband, and would do nothing to grieve us; tell them that nothing would pain either of us more than that any should suffer for this. Tell them they must do nothing, but be patient and pray."

There was a group still on the green near the pond as Isabel came up to supper that evening about six o'clock. Her father, who had given Lady Maxwell's message to the people an hour or two before, had asked her to go that way and send down a message to him immediately if there seemed to be any disturbance or threatening of it; but the men were very quiet. Mr. Musgrave was there, she saw, sitting with his pipe, on the stocks, and Piers, the young Irish bailiff, was standing near; they all were silent as the girl came up, and saluted her respectfully as usual; and she saw no signs of any dangerous element. There were one or two older women with the men, and others were standing at their open doors on all sides as she went up. The Rectory gate was locked, and no one was to be seen within.

Supper was laid in Sir Nicholas' room, as it generally was, and as it had been two nights ago; and it was very strange to Isabel to know that it was here that the arrest had taken place; the floor, too, she noticed as she came in, all about the threshold was scratched and dented by rough boots.

Lady Maxwell was very silent and distracted during supper; she made efforts to talk again and again, and her sister did her best to interest her and keep her talking; but she always relapsed after a minute or two into silence again, with long glances round the room, at the Vernacle over the fireplace, the prie-dieu with the shield of the Five Wounds above it, and all the things that spoke so keenly of her husband.

What a strange room it was, too, thought Isabel, with its odd mingling of the two worlds, with the tapestry of the hawking scene and the stiff herons and ladies on horseback on one side, and the little shelf of devotional books on the other; and yet how characteristic of its owner who fingered his cross-bow or the reins of his horse all day, and his beads in the evening; and how strange that an old man like Sir Nicholas, who knew the world, and had as much sense apparently as any one else, should be willing to sacrifice home and property and even life itself, for these so plainly empty superstitious things that could not please a God that was Spirit and Truth! So Isabel thought to herself, with no bitterness or contempt, but just a simple wonder and amazement, as she looked at the painted tokens and trinkets.

It was still daylight when they went upstairs to Lady Maxwell's room about seven, but the clear southern sky over the yew hedges and the tall elms where the rooks were circling, was beginning to be flushed with deep amber and rose. Isabel sat down in the window seat with the sweet air pouring in and looked out on to the garden with its tiled paths and its cool green squares of lawn, and the glowing beds at the sides. Over to her right the cloister court ran out, with its two rows of windows, bedrooms above with galleries beyond, as she knew, and parlours and cloisters below; the pleasant tinkle of the fountain in the court came faintly to her ears across the caw of the rooks about the elms and the low sounds from the stables and the kitchen behind the house. Otherwise the evening was very still; the two old ladies were sitting near the fireplace; Lady Maxwell had taken up her embroidery, and was looking at it listlessly, and Mistress Margaret had one of her devotional books and was turning the pages, pausing here and there as she did so.

Presently she began to read, without a word of introduction, one of the musings of the old monk John Audeley in his sickness, and as the tender lines stepped on, that restless jewelled hand grew still.

"As I lay sick in my languor In an abbey here by west; This book I made with great dolour, When I might not sleep nor rest. Oft with my prayers my soul I blest, And said aloud to Heaven's King, 'I know, O Lord, it is the best Meekly to take thy visiting. Else well I wot that I were lorn (High above all lords be he blest!) All that thou dost is for the best; By fault of Thee was no man lost, That is here of woman born.'"

And then she read some of Rolle's verses to Jesus, the "friend of all sick and sorrowful souls," and a meditation of his on the Passion, and the tranquil thoughts and tender fragrant sorrows soothed the torn throbbing soul; and Isabel saw the old wrinkled hand rise to her forehead, and the embroidery, with the needle still in it slipped to the ground; as the holy Name "like ointment poured forth" gradually brought its endless miracle and made all sweet and healthful again.

Outside the daylight was fading; the luminous vault overhead was deepening to a glowing blue as the sunset contracted on the western horizon to a few vivid streaks of glory; the room was growing darker every moment; and Mistress Margaret's voice began to stumble over words.

The great gilt harp in the corner only gleamed here and there now in single lines of clear gold where the dying daylight fell on the strings. The room was full of shadows and the image of the Holy Mother and Child had darkened into obscurity in their niche. The world was silent now too; the rooks were gone home and the stir of the household below had ceased; and in a moment more Mistress Margaret's voice had ceased too, as she laid the book down.

Then, as if the world outside had waited for silence before speaking, there came a murmur of sound from the further side of the house. Isabel started up; surely there was anger in that low roar from the village; was it this that her father had feared? Had she been remiss? Lady Maxwell too sprang up and faced the window with wide large eyes.

"The letter!" she said; and took a quick step towards the door; but Mistress Margaret was with her instantly, with her arm about her.

"Sit down, Mary," she said, "they will bring it at once"; and her sister obeyed; and she sat waiting and looking towards the door, clasping and unclasping her hands as they lay on her lap; and Mistress Margaret stood by her, waiting and watching too. Isabel still stood by the window listening. Had she been mistaken then? The roar had sunk into silence for a moment; and there came back the quick beat of a horse's hoofs outside on the short drive between the gatehouse and the Hall. They were right, then; and even as she thought it, and as the wife that waited for news of her husband drew a quick breath and half rose in her seat at the sound of that shod messenger that bore them, again the roar swelled up louder than ever; and Isabel sprang down from the low step of the window-seat into the dusky room where the two sisters waited.

"What is that? What is that?" she whispered sharply.

There was a sound of opening doors, and of feet that ran in the house below; and Lady Maxwell rose up and put out her hand, as a man-servant dashed in with a letter.

"My lady," he said panting, and giving it to her, "they are attacking the Rectory."

Lady Maxwell, who was half-way to the window now, for light to read her husband's letter, paused at that.

"The Rectory?" she said. "Why—Margaret——" then she stopped, and Isabel close beside her, saw her turn resolutely from the great sealed letter in her hand to the door, and back again.

"Jervis told us, my lady; none saw him as he rode through—they were breaking down the gate."

Then Lady Maxwell, with a quick movement, lifted the letter to her lips and kissed it, and thrust it down somewhere out of sight in the folds of her dress.

"Come, Margaret," she said.

Isabel followed them down the stairs and out through the hall-door; and there, as they came out on to the steps that savage snarling roar swelled up from the green. There was laughter and hooting mixed with that growl of anger; but even the laughter was fierce. The gatehouse stood up black against the glare of torches, and the towers threw great swinging shadows on the ground and the steps of the Hall.

Isabel followed the two grey glimmering figures, and was astonished at the speed with which she had to go. The hoofs of the courier's horse rang on the cobbles of the stable-yard as they came down towards the gatehouse, and the two wings of the door were wide-open through which he had passed just now; but the porter was gone.

Ah! there was the crowd; but not at the Rectory. On the right the Rectory gate lay wide open, and a flood of light poured out from the house-door at the end of the drive. Before them lay the dark turf, swarming with black figures towards the lower end; and a ceaseless roar came from them. There were half a dozen torches down there, tossing to and fro; Isabel saw that the crowd was still moving down towards the stocks and the pond.

Now the two ladies in front of her were just coming up with the skirts of the crowd; and there was an exclamation or two of astonishment as the women and children saw who it was that was coming. Then there came the furious scream of a man, and the crowd parted, as three men came reeling out together, two of them trying with all their power to restrain a fighting, kicking, plunging man in long black skirts, who tore and beat with his hands. The three ladies stopped for a moment, close together; and simultaneously the struggling man broke free and dashed back into the crowd, screaming with anger and misery.

"Marion, Marion—I am coming—O God!"

And Isabel saw with a shock of honor that sent her crouching and clinging close to Mistress Margaret, that it was the Rector. But the two men were after him and caught him by the shoulders as he disappeared; and as they turned they faced Lady Maxwell.

"My lady, my lady," stammered one, "we mean him no harm. We——" But his voice stopped, as there came a sudden silence, rent by a high terrible shriek and a splash; followed in a moment by a yell of laughter and shouting; and Lady Maxwell threw herself into the crowd in front.

There were a few moments of jostling in the dark, with the reek and press of the crowd about her; and Isabel found herself on the brink of the black pond, with Lady Maxwell on one side, and Piers on the other keeping the crowd back, and a dripping figure moaning and sobbing in the trampled mud at Lady Maxwell's feet. There was silence enough now, and the ring of faces opposite stared astonished and open-mouthed at the tall old lady with her grey veiled head upraised, as she stood there in the torchlight and rated them in her fearless indignant voice.

"I am ashamed, ashamed!" cried Lady Maxwell. "I thought you were men. I thought you loved my husband; and—and me." Her voice broke, and then once more she cried again. "I am ashamed, ashamed of my village."

And then she stooped to that heaving figure that had crawled up, and laid hold tenderly of the arms that were writhed about her feet.

"Come home, my dear," Isabel heard her whisper.

It was a strange procession homeward up the trampled turf. The crowd had broken into groups, and the people were awed and silent as they watched the four women go back together. Isabel walked a little behind with her father and Anthony, who had at last been able to come forward through the press and join them; and a couple of the torchbearers escorted them. In front went the three, on one side Lady Maxwell, her lace and silk splashed and spattered with mud, and her white hands black with it, and on the other the old nun, each with an arm thrown round the woman in the centre who staggered and sobbed and leaned against them as she went, with her long hair and her draggled clothes streaming with liquid mud every step she took. Once they stopped, at a group of three men. The Rector was sitting up, in his torn dusty cassock, and Isabel saw that one of his buckled shoes was gone, as he sat on the grass with his feet before him, but quiet now, with his hands before him, and a dazed stupid look in his little black eves that blinked at the light of the torch that was held over him; he said nothing as he looked at his wife between the two ladies, but his lips moved, and his eyes wandered for a moment to Lady Maxwell's face, and then back to his wife.

"Take him home presently," she said to the men who were with him—and then passed on again.

As they got through the gatehouse, Isabel stepped forward to Mistress Margaret's side.

"Shall I come?" she whispered; and the nun shook her head; so she with her father and brother stood there to watch, with the crowd silent and ashamed behind. The two torchbearers went on and stood by the steps as the three ladies ascended, leaving black footmarks as they went. The door was open and faces of servants peeped out, and hands were thrust out to take the burden from their mistress, but she shook her head, and the three came in together, and the door closed.

As the Norrises went back silently, the Rector passed them, with a little group accompanying him too; he, too, could hardly walk alone, so exhausted was he with his furious struggles to rescue his wife.

"Take your sister home," said Mr. Norris to Anthony; and they saw him slip off and pass his arm through the Rector's, and bend down his handsome kindly face to the minister's staring eyes and moving lips as he too led him homewards.

Even Anthony was hushed and impressed, and hardly spoke a word until he and Isabel turned off down the little dark lane to the Dower House.

"We could do nothing," he said, "father and I—until Lady Maxwell came."

"No," said Isabel softly, "she only could have done it."



CHAPTER X

A CONFESSOR

Sir Nicholas and the party were lodged at East Grinsted the night of their arrest, in the magistrate's house. Although he was allowed privacy in his room, after he had given his word of honour not to attempt an escape, yet he was allowed no conversation with Mr. Stewart or his own servant except in the presence of the magistrate or one of the pursuivants; and Mr. Stewart, since he was personally unknown to the magistrate, and since the charge against him was graver, was not on any account allowed to be alone for a moment, even in the room in which he slept. The following day they all rode on to London, and the two prisoners were lodged in the Marshalsea. This had been for a long while the place where Bishop Bonner was confined; and where Catholic prisoners were often sent immediately after their arrest; and Sir Nicholas at any rate found to his joy that he had several old friends among the prisoners. He was confined in a separate room; but by the kindness of his gaoler whom he bribed profusely as the custom was, through his servant, he had many opportunities of meeting the others; and even of approaching the sacraments and hearing mass now and then.

He began a letter to his wife on the day of his arrival and finished it the next day which was Saturday, and it was taken down immediately by the courier who had heard the news and had called at the prison. In fact, he was allowed a good deal of liberty; although he was watched and his conversation listened to, a good deal more than he was aware. Mr. Stewart, however, as he still called himself, was in a much harder case. The saddle-bags had been opened on his arrival, and incriminating documents found. Besides the "popish trinkets" they were found to contain a number of "seditious pamphlets," printed abroad for distribution in England; for at this time the College at Douai, under its founder Dr. William Allen, late Principal of St. Mary's Hall, Oxford, was active in the production of literature; these were chiefly commentaries on the Bull; as well as exhortations to the Catholics to stand firm and to persevere in recusancy, and to the schismatic Catholics, as they were called, to give over attending the services in the parish churches. There were letters also from Dr. Storey himself, whom the authorities already had in person under lock and key at the Tower. These were quite sufficient to make Mr. Stewart a prize; and he also was very shortly afterwards removed to the Tower.

Sir Nicholas wrote a letter at least once a week to his wife; but writing was something of a labour to him; it was exceedingly doubtful to his mind whether his letters were not opened and read before being handed to the courier, and as his seal was taken from him his wife could not tell either. However they seemed to arrive regularly; plainly therefore the authorities were either satisfied with their contents or else did not think them worth opening or suppressing. He was quite peremptory that his wife should not come up to London; it would only increase his distress, he said; and he liked to think of her at Maxwell Hall; there were other reasons too that he was prudent enough not to commit to paper, and which she was prudent enough to guess at, the principal of which was, of course, that she ought to be there for the entertaining and helping of other agents or priests who might be in need of shelter.

The old man got into good spirits again very soon. It pleased him to think that God had honoured him by imprisonment; and he said as much once or twice in his letters to his wife. He was also pleased with a sense of the part he was playing in the role of a conspirator; and he underlined and put signs and exclamation marks all over his letters of which he thought his wife would understand the significance, but no one else; whereas in reality the old lady was sorely puzzled by them, and the authorities who opened the letters generally read them of course like a printed book.

One morning about ten days after his arrival the Governor of the prison looked in with the gaoler, and announced to Sir Nicholas, after greeting him, that he was to appear before the Council that very day. This, of course, was what Sir Nicholas desired, and he thanked the Governor cordially for his good news.

"They will probably keep you at the Tower, Sir Nicholas," said the Governor, "and we shall lose you. However, sir, I hope you will be more comfortable there than we have been able to make you."

The knight thanked the Governor again, and said good-day to him with great warmth; for they had been on the best of terms with one another during his short detention at the Marshalsea.

The following day Sir Nicholas wrote a long letter to his wife describing his examination.

"We are in royal lodgings here at last, sweetheart; Mr. Boyd brought my luggage over yesterday; and I am settled for the present in a room of my own in the White Tower; with a prospect over the Court. I was had before my lords yesterday in the Council-room; we drove hither from the Marshalsea. There was a bay window in the room. I promise you they got little enough from me. There was my namesake, Sir Nicholas Bacon, my lords Leicester and Pembroke, and Mr. Secretary Cecil; Sir James Crofts, the Controller of the Household, and one or two more; but these were the principal. I was set before the table on a chair alone with none to guard me; but with men at the doors I knew very well. My lords were very courteous to me; though they laughed more than was seemly at such grave times. They questioned me much as to my religion. Was I a papist? If they meant by that a Catholic, that I was, and thanked God for it every day—(those nicknames like me not). Was I then a recusant? If by that they meant, Did I go to their Genevan Hotch-Potch? That I did not nor never would. I thought to have said a word here about St. Cyprian his work De Unitate Ecclesiae, as F——r X. told me, but they would not let me speak. Did I know Mr. Chapman? If by that they meant Mr. Stewart, that I did, and for a courteous God-fearing gentleman too. Was he a Papist, or a Catholic if I would have it so? That I would not tell them; let them find that out with their pursuivants and that crew. Did I think Protestants to be fearers of God? That I did not; they feared nought but the Queen's Majesty, so it seemed to me. Then they all laughed at once—I know not why. Then they grew grave; and Mr. Secretary began to ask me questions, sharp and hard; but I would not be put upon, and answered him again as he asked. Did I know ought of Dr. Storey? Nothing, said I, save that he is a good Catholic, and that they had taken him. He is a seditious rogue, said my Lord Pembroke. That he is not, said I. Then they asked me what I thought of the Pope and his Bull, and whether he can depose princes. I said I thought him to be the Vicar of Christ; and as to his power to depose princes, that I supposed he could do, if he said so. Then two or three cried out on me that I had not answered honestly; and at that I got wrath; and then they laughed again, at least I saw Sir James Crofts at it. And Mr. Secretary, looking very hard at me asked whether if Philip sent an armament against Elizabeth to depose her, I would fight for him or her grace. For neither, said I: I am too old. For which then would you pray? said they. For the Queen's Grace, said I, for that she was my sovereign. This seemed to content them; and they talked a little among themselves. They had asked me other questions too as to my way of living; whether I went to mass. They asked me too a little more about Mr. Stewart. Did I know him to be a seditious rascal? That I did not, said I. Then how, asked they, did you come to receive him and his pamphlets? Of his pamphlets, said I, I know nothing; I saw nothing in his bags save beads and a few holy books and such things. (You see, sweetheart, I did him no injury by saying so, because I knew that they had his bags themselves.) And I said I had received him because he was recommended to me by some good friends of mine abroad, and I told them their names too; for they are safe in Flanders now.

"And when they had done their questions they talked again for a while; and I was sent out to the antechamber to refresh myself; and Mr. Secretary sent a man with me to see that I had all I needed; and we talked together a little, and he said the Council were in good humour at the taking of Dr. Storey; and he had never seen them so merry. Then I was had back again presently; and Mr. Secretary said I was to stay in the Tower; and that Mr. Boyd was gone already to bring my things. And so after that I went by water to the Tower, and here I am, sweetheart, well and cheerful, praise God....

"My dearest, I send you my heart's best love. God have you in his holy keeping."

The Council treated the old knight very tenderly. They were shrewd enough to see his character very plainly; and that he was a simple man who knew nothing of sedition, but only had harboured agents thinking them to be as guileless as himself. As a matter of fact, Mr. Stewart was an agent of Dr. Storey's; and was therefore implicated in a number of very grave charges. This of course was a very serious matter; but both in the examination of the Council, and in papers in Mr. Stewart's bags, nothing could be found to implicate Sir Nicholas in any political intrigue at all. The authorities were unwilling too to put such a man to the torture. There was always a possibility of public resentment against the torture of a man for his religion alone; and they were desirous not to arouse this, since they had many prisoners who would be more productive subjects of the rack than a plainly simple and loyal old man whose only crime was his religion. They determined, however, to make an attempt to get a little more out of Sir Nicholas by a device which would excite no resentment if it ever transpired, and one which was more suited to the old man's nature and years.

Sir Nicholas thus described it to his wife.

"Last night, my dearest, I had a great honour and consolation. I was awakened suddenly towards two o'clock in the morning by the door of my room opening and a man coming in. It was somewhat dark, and I could not see the man plainly, but I could see that he limped and walked with a stick, and he breathed hard as he entered. I sat up and demanded of him who he was and what he wanted; and telling me to be still, he said that he was Dr. Storey. You may be sure, sweetheart, that I sprang up at that; but he would not let me rise; and himself sat down beside me. He said that by the kindness of a gaoler he had been allowed to come; and that he must not stay with me long; that he had heard of me from his good friend Mr. Stewart. I asked him how he did, for I heard that he had been racked; and he said yes, it was true; but that by the mercy of God and the prayers of the saints he had held his peace and they knew nothing from him. Then he asked me a great number of questions about the men I had entertained, and where they were now; and he knew many of their names. Some of them were friends of his own, he said; especially the priests. We talked a good while, till the morning light began; and then he said he must be gone or the head gaoler would know of his visit, and so he went. I wish I could have seen his face, sweetheart, for I think him a great servant of God; but it was still too dark when he went, and we dared not have a light for fear it should be seen."

This was as a matter of fact a ruse of the authorities. It was not Dr. Storey at all who was admitted to Sir Nicholas' prison, but Parker, who had betrayed him at Antwerp. It was so successful, for Sir Nicholas told him all that he knew (which was really nothing at all) that it was repeated a few months later with richer results; when the conspirator Baily, hysterical and almost beside himself with the pain of the rack, under similar circumstances gave up a cypher which was necessary to the Council in dealing with the correspondence of Mary Stuart. However, Sir Nicholas never knew the deception, and to the end of his days was proud that he had actually met the famous Dr. Storey, when they were both imprisoned in the Tower together, and told his friends of it with reverent pride when the doctor was hanged a year later.

Hubert, who had been sent for to take charge of the estate, had come to London soon after his father's arrival at the Tower; and was allowed an interview with him in the presence of the Lieutenant. Hubert was greatly affected; though he could not look upon the imprisonment with the same solemn exultation as that which his father had; but it made a real impression upon him to find that he took so patiently this separation from home and family for the sake of religion. Hubert received instructions from Sir Nicholas as to the management of the estate, for it was becoming plain that his father would have to remain in the Tower for the present; not any longer on a really grave charge, but chiefly because he was an obstinate recusant and would promise nothing. The law and its administration at this time were very far apart; the authorities were not very anxious to search out and punish those who were merely recusants or refused to take the oath of supremacy; and so Hubert and Mr. Boyd and other Catholics were able to come and go under the very nose of justice without any real risk to themselves; but it was another matter to let a sturdy recusant go from prison who stoutly refused to give any sort of promise or understanding as to future behaviour.

Sir Nicholas was had down more than once to further examination before the Lords Commissioners in the Lieutenant's house; but it was a very tame and even an amusing affair for all save Sir Nicholas. It was so easy to provoke him; he was so simple and passionate that they could get almost anything they wanted out of him by a little adroit baiting; and more than once his examination formed a welcome and humorous entr'acte between two real tragedies. Sir Nicholas, of course, never suspected for a moment that he was affording any amusement to any one. He thought their weary laughter to be sardonic and ironical, and he looked upon himself as a very desperate fellow indeed; and wrote glowing accounts of it all to his wife, full of apostrophic praises to God and the saints, in a hand that shook with excitement and awe at the thought of the important scenes in which he played so prominent a part.

But there was no atmosphere of humour about Mr. Stewart. He had disappeared from Sir Nicholas' sight on their arrival at the Marshalsea, and they had not set eyes on one another since; nor could all the knight's persuasion and offer of bribes make his gaoler consent to take any message or scrap of paper between them. He would not even answer more than the simplest inquiries about him,—that he was alive and in the Tower, and so forth; and Sir Nicholas prayed often and earnestly for that deliberate and vivacious young man who had so charmed and interested them all down at Great Keynes, and who had been so mysteriously engulfed by the sombre majesty of the law.

"I fear," he wrote to Lady Maxwell, "I fear that our friend must be sick or dying. But I can hear no news of him; when I am allowed sometimes to walk in the court or on the leads he is never there. My attendant Mr. Jakes looks glum and says nothing when I ask him how my friend does. My dearest, do not forget him in your prayers nor your old loving husband either."

One evening late in October Mr. Jakes did not come as usual to bring Sir Nicholas his supper at five o'clock; the time passed and still he did not come. This was very unusual. Presently Mrs. Jakes appeared instead, carrying the food which she set down at the door while she turned the key behind her. Sir Nicholas rallied her on having turned gaoler; but she turned on him a face with red eyes and lined with weeping.

"O Sir Nicholas," she said, for these two were good friends, "what a wicked place this is! God forgive me for saying so; but they've had that young man down there since two o'clock; and Jakes is with them to help; and he told me to come up to you, Sir Nicholas, with your supper, if they weren't done by five; and if the young gentleman hadn't said what they wanted."

Sir Nicholas felt sick.

"Who is it?" he asked.

"Why, who but Mr. Stewart?" she said; and then fell weeping again, and went out forgetting to lock the door behind her in her grief. Sir Nicholas sat still a moment, sick and shaken; he knew what it meant; but it had never come so close to him before. He got up presently and went to the door to listen for he knew not what. But there was no sound but the moan of the wind up the draughty staircase, and the sound of a prisoner singing somewhere above him a snatch of a song. He looked out presently, but there was nothing but the dark well of the staircase disappearing round to the left, and the glimmer of an oil lamp somewhere from the depths below him, with wavering shadows as the light was blown about by the gusts that came up from outside. There was nothing to be done of course; he closed the door, went back and prayed with all his might for the young man who was somewhere in this huge building, in his agony.

Mr. Jakes came up himself within half an hour to see if all was well; but said nothing of his dreadful employment or of Mr. Stewart; and Sir Nicholas did not like to ask for fear of getting Mrs. Jakes into trouble. The gaoler took away the supper things, wished him good-night, went out and locked the door, apparently without noticing it had been left undone before. Possibly his mind was too much occupied with what he had been seeing and doing. And the faithful account of all this went down in due time to Great Keynes.

The arrival of the courier at the Hall on Wednesday and Saturday was a great affair both to the household and to the village. Sir Nicholas sent his letter generally by the Saturday courier, and the other brought a kind of bulletin from Mr. Boyd, with sometimes a message or two from his master. These letters were taken by the ladies first to the study, as if to an oratory, and Lady Maxwell would read them slowly over to her sister. And in the evening, when Isabel generally came up for an hour or two, the girl would be asked to read them slowly all over again to the two ladies who sat over their embroidery on either side of her, and who interrupted for the sheer joy of prolonging it. And they would discuss together the exact significance of all his marks of emphasis and irony; and the girl would have all she could do sometimes not to feel a disloyal amusement at the transparency of the devices and the simplicity of the loving hearts that marvelled at the writer's depth and ingenuity. But she was none the less deeply impressed by his courageous cheerfulness, and by the power of a religion that in spite of its obvious weaknesses and improbabilities yet inspired an old man like Sir Nicholas with so much fortitude.

At first, too, a kind of bulletin was always issued on the Sunday and Thursday mornings, and nailed upon the outside of the gatehouse, so that any who pleased could come there and get first-hand information; and an interpreter stood there sometimes, one of the educated younger sons of Mr. Piers, and read out to the groups from Lady Maxwell's sprawling old handwriting, news of the master.

"Sir Nicholas has been had before the Council," he read out one day in a high complacent voice to the awed listeners, "and has been sent to the Tower of London." This caused consternation in the village, as it was supposed by the country-folk, not without excuse, that the Tower was the antechamber of death; but confidence was restored by the further announcement a few lines down that "he was well and cheerful."

Great interest, too, was aroused by more domestic matters.

"Sir Nicholas," it was proclaimed, "is in a little separate chamber of his own. Mr. Jakes, his gaoler, seems an honest fellow. Sir Nicholas hath a little mattress from a friend that Mr. Boyd fetched for him. He has dinner at eleven and supper at five. Sir Nicholas hopes that all are well in the village."

But other changes had followed the old knight's arrest. The furious indignation in the village against the part that the Rectory had played in the matter, made it impossible for the Dents to remain there. That the minister's wife should have been publicly ducked, and that not by a few blackguards but by the solid fathers and sons with the applause of the wives and daughters, made her husband's position intolerable, and further evidence was forthcoming in the behaviour of the people towards the Rector himself; some boys had guffawed during his sermon on the following Sunday, when he had ventured on a word or two of penitence as to his share in the matter, and he was shouted after on his way home.

Mrs. Dent seemed strangely changed and broken during her stay at the Hall. She had received a terrible shock, and it was not safe to move her back to her own house. For the first two or three nights, she would start from sleep again and again screaming for help and mercy and nothing would quiet her till she was wide awake and saw in the fire-light the curtained windows and the bolted door, and the kindly face of an old servant or Mistress Margaret with her beads in her hand. Isabel, who came up to see her two or three times, was both startled and affected by the change in her; and by the extraordinary mood of humility which seemed to have taken possession of the hard self-righteous Puritan.

"I begged pardon," she whispered to the girl one evening, sitting up in bed and staring at her with wide, hard eyes, "I begged pardon of Lady Maxwell, though I am not fit to speak to her. Do you think she can ever forgive me? Do you think she can? It was I, you know, who wrought all the mischief, as I have wrought all the mischief in the village all these years. She said she did, and she kissed me, and said that our Saviour had forgiven her much more. But—but do you think she has forgiven me?" And then again, another night, a day or two before they left the place, she spoke to Isabel again.

"Look after the poor bodies," she said, "teach them a little charity; I have taught them nought but bitterness and malice, so they have but given me my own back again. I have reaped what I have sown."

So the Dents slipped off early one morning before the folk were up; and by the following Sunday, young Mr. Bodder, of whom the Bishop entertained a high opinion, occupied the little desk outside the chancel arch; and Great Keynes once more had to thank God and the diocesan that it possessed a proper minister of its own, and not a mere unordained reader, which was all that many parishes could obtain.

Towards the end of September further hints began to arrive, very much underlined, in the knight's letters, of Mr. Stewart and his sufferings.

"You remember our friend," Isabel read out one Saturday evening, "not Mr. Stewart." (This puzzled the old ladies sorely till Isabel explained their lord's artfulness.) "My dearest, I fear the worst for him. I do not mean apostacy, thank God. But I fear that these wolves have torn him sadly, in their dens." Then followed the story of Mrs. Jakes, with all its horror, all the greater from the obscurity of the details.

Isabel put the paper down trembling, as she sat on the rug before the fire in the parlour upstairs, and thought of the bright-eyed, red-haired man with his steady mouth and low laugh whom Anthony had described to her.

Lady Maxwell posted upon the gatehouse:

"Sir Nicholas fears that a friend is in sore trouble; he hopes he may not yield."

Then, after a few days more, a brief notice with a black-line drawn round it, that ran, in Mr. Bodder's despite:

"Our friend has passed away. Pray for his soul."

Sir Nicholas had written in great agitation to this effect.

"My sweetheart, I have heavy news to-day. There was a great company of folks below my window to-day, in the Inner Ward, where the road runs up below the Bloody Tower. It was about nine of the clock. And there was a horse there whose head I could see; and presently from the Beauchamp Tower came, as I thought, an old man between two warders; and then I could not very well see; the men were in my way; but soon the horse went off, and the men after him; and I could hear the groaning of the crowd that were waiting for them outside. And when Mr. Jakes brought me my dinner at eleven of the clock, he told me it was our friend—(think of it, my dearest—him whom I thought an old man!)—that had been taken off to Tyburn. And now I need say no more, but bid you pray for his soul."

Isabel could hardly finish reading it; for she heard a quick sobbing breath behind her, and felt a wrinkled old hand caressing her hair and cheek as her voice faltered.

Meanwhile Hubert was in town. Sir Nicholas had at first intended him to go down at once and take charge of the estate; but Piers was very competent, and so his father consented that he should remain in London until the beginning of October; and this too better suited Mr. Norris' plans who wished to send Isabel off about the same time to Northampton.

When Hubert at last did arrive, he soon showed himself extremely capable and apt for the work. He was out on the estate from morning till night on his cob, and there was not a man under him from Piers downwards who had anything but praise for his insight and industry.

There was in Hubert, too, as there so often is in country-boys who love and understand the life of the woods and fields, a balancing quality of a deep vein of sentiment; and this was now consecrated to Isabel Norris. He had pleasant dreams as he rode home in the autumn evening, under the sweet keen sky where the harvest moon rose large and yellow over the hills to his left and shed a strange mystical light that blended in a kind of chord with the dying daylight. It was at times like that, when the air was fragrant with the scent of dying leaves, with perhaps a touch of frost in it, and the cottages one by one opened red glowing eyes in the dusk, that the boy began to dream of a home of his own and pleasant domestic joys; of burning logs on the hearth and lighted candles, and a dear slender figure moving about the room. He used to rehearse to himself little meetings and partings; look at the roofs of the Dower House against the primrose sky as he rode up the fields homewards; identify her window, dark now as she was away; and long for Christmas when she would be back again. The only shadow over these delightful pictures was the uncertainty as to the future. Where after all would the home be? For he was a younger son. He thought about James very often. When he came back would he live at home? Would it all be James' at his father's death, these woods and fields and farms and stately house? Would it ever come to him? And, meanwhile where should he and Isabel live, when the religious difficulty had been surmounted, as he had no doubt that it would be sooner or later?

When he thought of his father now, it was with a continually increasing respect. He had been inclined to despise him sometimes before, as one of a simple and uneventful life; but now the red shadow of the Law conferred dignity. To have been imprisoned in the Tower was a patent of nobility, adding distinction and gravity to the commonplace. Something of the glory even rested on Hubert himself as he rode and hawked with other Catholic boys, whose fathers maybe were equally zealous for the Faith, but less distinguished by suffering for it.

Before Anthony went back to Cambridge, he and Hubert went out nearly every day together with or without their hawks. Anthony was about three years the younger, and Hubert's additional responsibility for the estate made the younger boy more in awe of him than the difference in their ages warranted. Besides, Hubert knew quite as much about sport, and had more opportunities for indulging his taste for it. There was no heronry at hand; besides, it was not the breeding time which is the proper season for this particular sport; so they did not trouble to ride out to one; but the partridges and hares and rabbits that abounded in the Maxwell estate gave them plenty of quarreys. They preferred to go out generally without the falconer, a Dutchman, who had been taken into the service of Sir Nicholas thirty years before when things had been more prosperous; it was less embarrassing so; but they would have a lad to carry the "cadge," and a pony following them to carry the game. They added to the excitement of the sport by making it a competition between their birds; and flying them one after another, or sometimes at the same quarry, as in coursing; but this often led to the birds' crabbing.

Anthony's peregrine Eliza was almost unapproachable; and the lad was the more proud of her as he had "made" her himself, as an "eyess" or young falcon captured as a nestling. But, on the other hand, Hubert's goshawk Margaret, a fiery little creature, named inappropriately enough after his tranquil aunt, as a rule did better than Anthony's Isabel, and brought the scores level again.

There was one superb day that survived long in Anthony's memory and conversation; when he had done exceptionally well, when Eliza had surpassed herself, and even Isabel had acquitted herself with credit. It was one of those glorious days of wind and sun that occasionally fall in early October, with a pale turquoise sky overhead, and air that seems to sparkle and intoxicate like wine. They went out together after dinner about noon; their ponies and spaniels danced with the joy of life; Lady Maxwell cried to them from the north terrace to be careful, and pointed out to Mr. Norris who had dined with them what a graceful seat Hubert had; and then added politely, but as an obvious afterthought, that Anthony seemed to manage his pony with great address. The boys turned off through the village, and soon got on to high ground to the west of the village and all among the stubble and mustard, with tracts of rich sunlit country, of meadows and russet woodland below them on every side. Then the sport began. It seemed as if Eliza could not make a mistake. There rose a solitary partridge forty yards away with a whirl of wings; (the coveys were being well broken up by now) Anthony unhooded his bird and "cast off," with the falconer's cry "Hoo-ha, ha, ha, ha," and up soared Eliza with the tinkle of bells, on great strokes of those mighty wings, up, up, behind the partridge that fled low down the wind for his life. The two ponies were put to the gallop as the peregrine began to "stoop"; and then down like a plummet she fell with closed wings, "raked" the quarry with her talons as she passed; recovered herself, and as Anthony came up holding out the tabur-stycke, returned to him and was hooded and leashed again; and sat there on his gloved wrist with wet claws, just shivering slightly from her nerves, like the aristocrat she was; while her master stroked her ashy back and the boy picked up the quarry, admiring the deep rent before he threw it into the pannier.

Then Hubert had the next turn; but his falcon missed his first stoop, and did not strike the quarry till the second attempt, thus scoring one to Anthony's account. Then the peregrines were put back on the cadge as the boys got near to a wide meadow in a hollow where the rabbits used to feed; and the goshawks Margaret and Isabel were taken, each in turn sitting unhooded on her master's wrist, while they all watched the long thin grass for the quick movement that marked the passage of a rabbit;—and then in a moment the bird was cast off. The goshawk would rise just high enough to see the quarry in the grass, then fly straight with arched wings and pounces stretched out as she came over the quarry; then striking him between the shoulders would close with him; and her master would come up and take her off, throw the rabbit to the game-carrier; and the other would have the next attempt.

And so they went on for three or four hours, encouraging their birds, whooping the death of the quarry, watching with all the sportsman's keenness the soaring and stooping of the peregrines, the raking off of the goshawks; listening to the thrilling tinkle of the bells, and taking back their birds to sit triumphant and complacent on their master's wrists, when the quarry had been fairly struck, and furious and sullen when it had eluded them two or three times till their breath left them in the dizzy rushes, and they "canceliered" or even returned disheartened and would fly no more till they had forgotten—till at last the shadows grew long, and the game more wary, and the hawks and ponies tired; and the boys put up the birds on the cadge, and leashed them to it securely; and jogged slowly homewards together up the valley road that led to the village, talking in technical terms of how the merlin's feather must be "imped" to-morrow; and of the relative merits of the "varvels" or little silver rings at the end of the jesses through which the leash ran, and the Dutch swivel that Squire Blackett always used.

As they got nearer home and the red roofs of the Dower House began to glow in the ruddy sunlight above the meadows, Hubert began to shift the conversation round to Isabel, and inquire when she was coming home. Anthony was rather bored at this turn of the talk; but thought she would be back by Christmas at the latest; and said that she was at Northampton—and had Hubert ever seen such courage as Eliza's? But Hubert would not be put off; but led the talk back again to the girl; and at last told Anthony under promise of secrecy that he was fond of Isabel, and wished to make her his wife;—and oh! did Anthony think she cared really for him. Anthony stared and wondered and had no opinion at all on the subject; but presently fell in love with the idea that Hubert should be his brother-in-law and go hawking with him every day; and he added a private romance of his own in which he and Mary Corbet should be at the Dower House, with Hubert and Isabel at the Hall; while the elders, his own father, Sir Nicholas, Mr. James, Lady Maxwell, and Mistress Torridon had all taken up submissive and complacent attitudes in the middle distance.

He was so pensive that evening that his father asked him at supper whether he had not had a good day; which diverted his thoughts from Mistress Corbet, and led him away from sentiment on a stream of his own talk with long backwaters of description of this and that stoop, and of exactly the points in which he thought the Maxwells' falconer had failed in the training of Hubert's Jane.

Hubert found a long letter waiting from his father which Lady Maxwell gave him to read, with messages to himself in it about the estate, which brought him down again from the treading of rosy cloud-castles with a phantom Isabel whither his hawks and the shouting wind and the happy day had wafted him, down to questions of barns and farm-servants and the sober realities of harvest.



CHAPTER XI

MASTER CALVIN

Isabel reached Northampton a day or two before Hubert came back to Great Keynes. She travelled down with two combined parties going to Leicester and Nottingham, sleeping at Leighton Buzzard on the way; and on the evening of the second day reached the house of her father's friend Dr. Carrington, that stood in the Market Square.

Her father's intention in sending her to this particular town and household was to show her how Puritanism, when carried to its extreme, was as orderly and disciplined a system, and was able to control the lives of its adherents, as well as the Catholicism whose influence on her character he found himself beginning to fear. But he wished also that she should be repelled to some extent by the merciless rigidity she would find at Northampton, and thus, after an oscillation or two come to rest in the quiet eclecticism of that middle position which he occupied himself.

The town indeed was at this time a miniature Geneva. There was something in the temper of its inhabitants that made it especially susceptible to the wave of Puritanism that was sweeping over England. Lollardy had flourished among them so far back as the reign of Richard II; when the mayor, as folks told one another with pride, had plucked a mass-priest by the vestment on the way to the altar in All Saints' Church, and had made him give over his mummery till the preacher had finished his sermon.

Dr. Carrington, too, a clean-shaven, blue-eyed, grey-haired man, churchwarden of Saint Sepulchre's, was a representative of the straitest views, and desperately in earnest. For him the world ranged itself into the redeemed and the damned; these two companies were the pivots of life for him; and every subject of mind or desire was significant only so far as it bore relations to be immutable decrees of God. But his fierce and merciless theological insistence was disguised by a real human tenderness and a marked courtesy of manner; and Isabel found him a kindly and thoughtful host.

Yet the mechanical strictness of the household, and the overpowering sense of the weightiness of life that it conveyed, was a revelation to Isabel. Dr. Carrington at family prayers was a tremendous figure, as he kneeled upright at the head of the table in the sombre dining-room; and it seemed to Isabel in her place that the pitiless all-seeing Presence that kept such terrifying silence as the Doctor cried on Jehovah, was almost a different God to that whom she knew in the morning parlour at home, to whom her father prayed with more familiarity but no less romance, and who answered in the sunshine that lay on the carpet, and the shadows of boughs that moved across it, and the chirp of the birds under the eaves. And all day long she thought she noticed the same difference; at Great Keynes life was made up of many parts, the love of family, the country doings, the worship of God, the garden, and the company of the Hall ladies; and the Presence of God interpenetrated all like light or fragrance; but here life was lived under the glare of His eye, and absorption in any detail apart from the consciousness of that encompassing Presence had the nature of sin.

On the Saturday after her arrival, as she was walking by the Nen with Kate Carrington, one of the two girls, she asked her about the crowd of ministers she had seen in the streets that morning.

"They have been to the Prophesyings," said Kate. "My father says that there is no exercise that sanctifies a godly young minister so quickly."

Kate went on to describe them further. The ministers assembled each Saturday at nine o'clock, and one of their number gave a short Bible-reading or lecture. Then all present were invited to join in the discussion; the less instructed would ask questions, the more experienced would answer, and debate would run high. Such a method Kate explained, who herself was a zealous and well instructed Calvinist, was the surest and swiftest road to truth, for every one held the open Scriptures in his hand, and interpreted and checked the speakers by the aid of that infallible guide.

"But if a man's judgment lead him wrong?" asked Isabel, who professedly admitted authority to have some place in matters of faith.

"All must hold the Apostles' Creed first of all," said Kate, "and must set his name to a paper declaring the Pope to be antichrist, with other truths upon it."

Isabel was puzzled; for it seemed now as if Private Judgment were not supreme among its professors; but she did not care to question further. It began to dawn upon her presently, however, why the Queen was so fierce against Prophesyings; for she saw that they exercised that spirit of exclusiveness, the property of Papist and Puritan alike; which, since it was the antithesis of the tolerant comprehensiveness of the Church of England, was also the enemy of the theological peace that Elizabeth was seeking to impose upon the country; and that it was for that reason that Papist and Puritan, sundered so far in theology, were united in suffering for conscience' sake.

On the Sunday morning Isabel went with Mrs. Carrington and the two girls to the round Templars' Church of Saint Sepulchre, for the Morning Prayer at eight o'clock, and then on to St. Peter's for the sermon. It was the latter function that was important in Puritan eyes; for the word preached was considered to have an almost sacramental force in the application of truth and grace to the soul; and crowds of people, with downcast eyes and in sombre dress, were pouring down the narrow streets from all the churches round, while the great bell beat out its summons from the Norman tower. The church was filled from end to end as they came in, meeting Dr. Carrington at the door, and they all passed up together to the pew reserved for the churchwarden, close beneath the pulpit.

As Isabel looked round her, it came upon her very forcibly what she had begun to notice even at Great Keynes, that the religion preached there did not fit the church in which it was set forth; and that, though great efforts had been made to conform the building to the worship. There had been no half measures at Northampton, for the Puritans had a loathing of what they called a "mingle-mangle." Altars, footpaces, and piscinae had been swept away and all marks of them removed, as well as the rood-loft and every image in the building; the stained windows had been replaced by plain glass painted white; the walls had been whitewashed from roof to floor, and every suspicion of colour erased except where texts of Scripture ran rigidly across the open wall spaces: "We are not under the Law, but under Grace," Isabel read opposite her, beneath the clerestory windows. And, above all, the point to which all lines and eyes converged, was occupied no longer by the Table but by the tribunal of the Lord. Yet underneath the disguise the old religion triumphed still. Beneath the great plain orderly scheme, without depth of shadows, dominated by the towering place of Proclamation where the crimson-faced herald waited to begin, the round arches and the elaborate mouldings, and the cool depths beyond the pillars, all declared that in the God for whom that temple was built, there was mystery as well as revelation, Love as well as Justice, condescension as well as Majesty, beauty as well as awfulness, invitations as well as eternal decrees.

Isabel looked up presently, as the people still streamed in, and watched the minister in his rustling Genevan gown, leaning with his elbows on the Bible that rested open on the great tasselled velvet cushion before him. Everything about him was on the grand scale; his great hands were clasped and protruded over the edge of the Book; and his heavy dark face looked menacingly round on the crowded church; he had the air of a melancholy giant about to engage in some tragic pleasure. But Isabel's instinctive dislike began to pass into positive terror so soon as he began to preach.

When the last comers had found a place, and the talking had stopped, he presently gave out his text, in a slow thunderous voice, that silenced the last whispers:

"What shall we then say to these things? If God be on our side, who can be against us?"

There were a few slow sentences, in a deep resonant voice, uttering each syllable deliberately like the explosion of a far-off gun, and in a minute or two he was in the thick of Calvin's smoky gospel. Doctrine, voice, and man were alike terrible and overpowering.

There lay the great scheme in a few minutes, seen by Isabel as though through the door of hell, illumined by the glare of the eternal embers. The huge merciless Will of God stood there before her, disclosed in all its awfulness, armed with thunders, moving on mighty wheels. The foreknowledge of God closed the question henceforth, and, if proof were needed, made predestination plain. There was man's destiny, irrevocably fixed, iron-bound, changeless and immovable as the laws of God's own being. Yet over the rigid and awful Face of God, flickered a faint light, named mercy; and this mercy vindicated its existence by demanding that some souls should escape the final and endless doom that was the due reward of every soul conceived and born in enmity against God and under the frown of His Justice.

Then, heralded too by wrath, the figure of Jesus began to glimmer through the thunderclouds; and Isabel lifted her eyes, to look in hope. But He was not as she had known him in His graciousness, and as He had revealed Himself to her in tender communion, and among the flowers and under the clear skies of Sussex. Here, in this echoing world of wrath He stood, pale and rigid, with lightning in His eyes, and the grim and crimson Cross behind him; and as powerless as His own Father Himself to save one poor timid despairing hoping soul against whom the Eternal Decree had gone forth. Jesus was stern and forbidding here, with the red glare of wrath on His Face too, instead of the rosy crown of Love upon His forehead; His mouth was closed with compressed lips which surely would only open to condemn; not that mouth, quivering and human, that had smiled and trembled and bent down from the Cross to kiss poor souls that could not hope, nor help themselves, that had smiled upon Isabel ever since she had known Him. It was appalling to this gentle maiden soul that had bloomed and rejoiced so long in the shadow of His healing, to be torn out of her retreat and set thus under the consuming noonday of the Justice of this Sun of white-hot Righteousness.