Chapter Twenty Six.
“A ruck of trouble.”
“Well, be sure! if there ever was a woman in such a ruck of trouble!” said poor Collet Pardue, wiping her eyes. “Here’s my man took to prison, saints knows what for—my man ’at was as quiet as ever a mouse, and as good to me as if he’d ha’ been a cherubim, and me left with all them childre—six lads and four lasses—eight o’ my own, and two of poor Sens’s—and the lads that mischievous as I scarce knows whether I’m on my head or my heels one half o’ the day! Here’s that Silas a-been and took and dropped the bucket down the well, and never a drop o’ water can we get. And Aphabell he’s left the gate open, and nine out o’ my fourteen chicken strayed away. And I sent Toby for a loaf o’ biscuit-bread, a-thinking it’d be a treat for the little uns, and me not having a mite o’ time to make it—and if the rogue hasn’t been and ate it all up a-coming home—there’s the crumbs on his jacket this minute!”
“I didn’t!” shouted Tobias resentfully, in answer to this unjust accusation. “I didn’t eat it all up! I gave half on it to Esdras—a good half.” The last words were uttered in a tone of conscious virtue, the young gentleman evidently feeling that his self-denial was not meeting its due reward.
“Ha’ done then, thou runagate!” returned his mother, aiming a slap at him, which Tobias dodged by a dip of his head. “Eh, deary me, but they are a weary lot, these childre!”
“Why stand you not up to them better, Collet Pardue?” asked the neighbour who was the listener to poor Collet’s list of grievances. “Can’t you rouse yourself and see to them?”
“Seems to me, Mistress Hall, I’ve got no rouse left in me, wi’ all these troubles a-coming so thick,” said poor Collet, shaking her head. “If you’d six lads and four maids, and your man in prison for nought, and the bucket down the well, and the chicken strayed, and your poor old mother sick a-bed, and them pies in the oven a-burning this minute—Oh me!”
Collet made a rush at the oven, having to push Charity Bradbridge out of her way, who was staring open-mouthed at the brilliant parrot wrought in floss silks on the exterior of Mrs Tabitha’s large work-bag.
“I’ve told you twenty times, Collet Pardue, you lack method,” pursued Mrs Hall, with a magisterial air. “Why set you not Esdras to hunt the chicken, and Noah to fish up the bucket, and Beatrice to wait on your mother, and Penuel to see to the pies, and leave yourself freer? I make my childre useful, I can tell you. The more children, the more to wait on you.”
“Well, Mistress Hall, I’ve always found it t’other way about—the more childre, the more for you to wait on. Pen, she’s ironing, and Beatie is up wi’ mother. But as to Esdras hunting up the chicks, why, he’d come home wi’ more holes than he’s got, and that’s five, as I know to my cost; and set Noah to get up the bucket, he’d never do nought but send his self a-flying after it down the well, and then I should have to fish him up. ’Tis mighty good talking, when you’ve only three, and them all maids; maids can be ruled by times; but them lads, they’re that cantankerous as— There now, I might ha’ known Noah was after some mischief; he’s never quiet but he is! Do ’ee look, how he’s tangled my blue yarn ’at I’d wound only last night—twisted it round every chair and table in the place, and— You wicked, sinful boy, to go and tangle the poor cat along with ’em! I’ll be after you, see if I’m not! You’ll catch some’at!”
“Got to catch me first!” said Noah, with a grin, darting out of the door as his over-worried mother made a grab at him.
Poor Collet sat down and succumbed under her sufferings, throwing her apron over her face for a good cry. Beatrice, who came down the ladder which led to the upper chambers, took in the scene at a glance. She was a bright little girl of ten years old. Setting down the tray in her hand, she first speedily delivered the captive pussy, and then proceeded deftly to disentangle the wool, rolling it up again in a ball.
“Prithee, weep not, Mother, dear heart!” she said cheerily. “Granny sleeps, and needs no tending at this present. I’ve set pussy free, I shall soon have the yarn right again. You’re over-wrought, poor Mother!”
Her child’s sympathetic words seemed to have the effect of making Collet cry the harder; but Tabitha’s voice responded for her.
“Well said, Beatrice, and well done! I love to see a maid whose fingers are not all thumbs. But, dear me, Collet, what a shiftless woman are you! Can’t you pack those lads out o’ door, and have a quiet house for your work? I should, for sure!”
“You’d find you’d got your work cut out, Mistress Hall, I can tell you. ‘Pack ’em out o’ door’ means just send ’em to prey on your neighbours, and have half-a-dozen angry folks at you afore night, and a sight o’ damage for to pay.”
“Set them to weed your garden, can’t you? and tie up that trailing honeysuckle o’er the porch, that’s a shame to be seen. Make ’em useful—that’s what I say.”
“And ’tis what I’d be main thankful to do if I could—that I’ll warrant you, Mistress Hall; but without I stood o’er ’em every minute of the time, the flowers ’d get plucked up and the weeds left, every one on ’em. That’d be useful, wouldn’t it?”
“You’ve brought them up ill, Collet, or they’d be better lads than that. I’d have had ’em as quat as mice, the whole six, afore I’d been their mother a week.”
“I cast no doubt, Mistress Hall,” said Collet, driven to retort as she rarely did, “if you’d had the world to make, it’d ha’ been mortal grand, and all turned out spic-span: look you, the old saw saith, ‘Bachelors’ wives be always well-learned,’ and your lads be angels, that’s sure, seein’ you haven’t ne’er a one on ’em; but mine isn’t so easy to manage as yourn, looking as I’ve six to see to.”
“You’ve lost your temper, Collet Pardue,” said Mrs Tabitha, with calm complacency; “and that’s a thing a woman shouldn’t do who calls herself a Christian.”
Before Collet could reply, a third person stood in the doorway. She looked up, and saw her landlord, Mr Benden.
As it happened, that gentleman was not aware of the presence of his sister-in-law, who was concealed from him by the open door behind which she was sitting, as well as by a sheet which was hanging up to air in the warm atmosphere of the kitchen. He had not, therefore, the least idea that Tabitha heard his words addressed to Collet.
“So your husband has been sent to prison, Mistress, for an heretic and a contemner of the blessed Sacrament?”
“My husband contemns not the blessed Sacrament that our Lord Jesus Christ instituted,” answered Collet, turning to face her new assailant; “but he is one of them that will not be made to commit idolatry unto a piece of bread.”
“Well said, indeed!” sneered Mr Benden. “This must needs be good world when cloth-workers’ wives turn doctors of religion! How look you to make my rent, Mistress, with nought coming in, I pray you?”
“Your rent’s not due, Master, for five weeks to come.”
“And when they be come, I do you to wit, I will have it—or else forth you go. Do you hear, Mistress Glib-tongue?”
“Dear heart, Master Benden!” cried Collet, in consternation. “Sure you can never have the heart to turn us adrift—us as has always paid you every farthing up to the hour it was due!”
“Ay, and I’ll have this, every farthing up to the hour ’tis due! I’ll have no canting hypocrites in my houses, nor no such as be notorious traitors to God and the Queen’s Majesty! I’ll—”
“O Master, we’re no such, nor never was—” began the sobbing Collet.
But both speeches were cut across by a third voice, which made the landlord turn a shade paler and stop his diatribe suddenly; for it was the voice of the only mortal creature whom Edward Benden feared.
“Then you’d best turn yourself out, Edward Benden, and that pretty sharp, before I come and make you!” said the unexpected voice of the invisible Tabitha. “I haven’t forgot, if you have, what a loyal subject you were in King Edward’s days, nor how you essayed to make your court to my Lord of Northumberland that was, by proclaiming my Lady Jane at Cranbrook, and then, as soon as ever you saw how the game was going, you turned coat and threw up your cap for Queen Mary. If all the canting hypocrites be bundled forth of Staplehurst, you’ll be amongst the first half-dozen, I’ll be bound! Get you gone, if you’ve any shame left, and forbear to torture an honest woman that hath troubles enow.”
“He’s gone, Mistress Hall,” said little Beatrice. “I count he scarce heard what you last spake.”
“O Mistress Hall, you are a good friend, and I’m for ever bounden to you!” said poor Collet, when she was able to speak for tears. “And if it please you, I’m main sorry I lost my temper, and if I said any word to you as I shouldn’t, I’ll take ’em back every one, and may God bless you!”
“Well said, old friend!” answered Tabitha, in high good-humour.
“And, O Mistress, do you think, an’ it like you, that Master Benden will turn us forth on Saint Austin’s morrow?—that’s when our rent’s due.”
“What is your rent, neighbour?”
“’Tis thirteen-and-fourpence, the house, Mistress—but then we’ve the bit o’ pasture land behind, for our horse and cow—that’s eight shillings more by the year. And I’ve only”—Collet went to a chest, and lifted out an old black stocking—“I haven’t but sixteen shillings laid by towards it, and look you, there’ll be no wages coming in save Toby’s and Esdras’ and Aphabell’s, and we’ve to live. With ’leven of us to eat and be clad, we can’t save many pence for rent, and I did hope Master Benden ’d be pleased to wait a while. Of course he must have his own, like any other; but if he would ha’ waited—”
“He’ll wait,” said Tabitha, and shut her mouth with a snap. “But lest he should not, Collet, come by Seven Roads as you go to pay your rent, and whatso you may be short for the full amount, I’ll find you.”
“Eh dear, Mistress Hall, I could cut my tongue in leches (slices) that it ever spake a word as didn’t please you!” cried the grateful Collet, though Tabitha had spoken a multitude of words which were by no means pleasing to her. “And we’ll all pray God bless you when we’re on our knees to-night, and all your folks belike. And I will essay to keep the lads better-way, though in very deed I don’t know how,” concluded she, as Tabitha rose, well pleased, patted Charity on the head, told Beatrice to be a good maid and help her mother, and in a mood divided between gratification and grim plans for giving Mr Benden the due reward of his deeds, set out on her walk home.
Chapter Twenty Seven.
Company in distress.
“Now then, stir up, Mistress Benden! You are to be shifted to the Castle.”
Alice Benden looked up as the keeper approached her with that news. The words sounded rough, but the tone was not unkind. There was even a slight tinge of pity in it.
What that transfer meant, both the keeper and the prisoner knew. It was the preparatory step to a sentence of death.
All hope for this world died out of the heart of Alice Benden. No more possibility of reconciliation and forgiveness for Edward!—no more loving counsels to Christabel—no more comforting visits from Roger. Instead of them, one awful hour of scarcely imaginable anguish, and then, from His seat on the right hand of God, Christ would rise to receive His faithful witness—the Tree of Life would shade her, and the Water of Life would refresh her, and no more would the sun light upon her, nor any heat: she should be comforted for evermore. The better hope was to be made way for by the extinction of the lower. She lifted up her heart unto the Lord, and said silently within herself the ancient Christian formula of the early Church—
“Amen, Lord Christ!—so let it be.”
In a chair, for she was too crippled to walk, Alice was carried by two of the gaoler’s men outside the Cathedral precincts. She had not been in the open air for a month. They carried her out eastwards, across Burgate Street (which dates from the days of King Ethelred), down by the city wall, past Saint George’s Gate and the Grey Friars, up Sheepshank’s Lane, and so to the old Norman Castle, the keep of which is the third largest of Norman keeps in England, and is now, to the glory of all the Huns and Vandals, converted into a gasometer! In the barbican sat several prisoners in chains, begging their bread. But Alice was borne past this, and up the north-east staircase, from the walls of which looked out at her verses of the Psalms in Hebrew—silent, yet eloquent witnesses of the dispersion and suffering of Judah—and into a small chamber, where she was laid down on a rude bed, merely a frame with sacking and a couple of blankets upon it.
“Nights be cold yet,” said the more humane of her two bearers. “The poor soul ’ll suffer here, I’m feared.”
“She’ll be warm enough anon,” said the other and more brutal of the pair. “I reckon the faggots be chopped by now that shall warm her.”
Alice knew what he meant. He passed out of the door without another word, but the first man lingered to say in a friendly tone—“Good even to you, Mistress!” It was his little cup of cold water to Christ’s servant.
“Good even, friend,” replied Alice; “and may our Saviour Christ one day say to thee, ‘Inasmuch’!”
Yes, she would be warm enough by-and-by. There should be no more pain nor toil, no more tears nor terrors, whither she was going. The King’s “Well done, good and faithful servant!” would mark the entrance on a new life from which the former things had passed away.
She lay there alone till the evening, when the gaoler’s man brought her supper. It consisted of a flat cake of bread, a bundle of small onions, and a pint of weak ale. As he set it down, he said—“There’ll be company for you to-morrow.”
“I thank you for showing it to me,” said Alice courteously; “pray you, who is it?”
“’Tis a woman from somewhere down your way,” he answered, as he went out; “but her name I know not.”
Alice’s hopes sprang up. She felt cheered by the prospect of the company of any human creature, after her long lonely imprisonment; and it would be a comfort to have somebody who would help her to turn on her bed, which, unaided, it gave her acute pain to do. Beside, there was great reason to expect that her new companion would be a fellow-witness for the truth. Alice earnestly hoped that they would not—whether out of intended torture or mere carelessness—place a criminal with her. Deep down in her heart, almost unacknowledged to herself, lay a further hope. If it should be Rachel Potkin!
Of the apprehension of the batch of prisoners from Staplehurst Alice had heard nothing. She had therefore no reason to imagine that the woman “from somewhere down her way” was likely to be a personal friend. The south-western quarter of Kent was rather too large an area to rouse expectations of that kind.
It was growing dusk on the following evening before the “company” arrived. Alice had sung her evening Psalms—a cheering custom which she had kept up through all the changes and sufferings of her imprisonment—and was beginning to feel rather drowsy when the sound of footsteps roused her, stopping at her door.
“Now, Mistress! here you be!” said the not unpleasant voice of the Castle gaoler.
“Eh, deary me!” answered another voice, which struck Alice’s ear as not altogether strange.
“Good even, friend!” she hastened to say.
“Nay, you’d best say ‘ill even,’ I’m sure,” returned the newcomer. “I’ve ne’er had a good even these many weeks past.”
Alice felt certain now that she recognised the voice of an old acquaintance, whom she little expected to behold in those circumstances.
“Why, Sens Bradbridge, is that you?”
“Nay, sure, ’tis never Mistress Benden? Well, I’m as glad to see you again as I can be of aught wi’ all these troubles on me. Is’t me? Well, I don’t justly know whether it be or no; I keep reckoning I shall wake up one o’ these days, and find me in the blue bed in my own little chamber at home. Eh deary, Mistress Benden, but this is an ill look-out! So many of us took off all of a blow belike—”
“Have there been more arrests, then, at Staplehurst? Be my brethren taken?”
“Not as I knows of: but a lot of us was catched up all to oncet—Nichol White, ironmonger, and mine hostess of the White Hart, and Emmet Wilson, and Collet Pardue’s man, and Fishwick, the flesher, and me. Eh, but you may give thanks you’ve left no childre behind you! There’s my two poor little maids, that I don’t so much as know what’s come of ’em, or if they’ve got a bite to eat these hard times! Lack-a-daisy-me! but why they wanted to take a poor widow from her bits of childre, it do beat me, it do!”
“I am sorry for Collet Pardue,” said Alice gravely. “But for your maids, Sens, I am sure you may take your heart to you. The neighbours should be safe to see they lack not, be sure.”
“I haven’t got no heart to take, Mistress Benden—never a whit, believe me. Look you, Mistress Final she had ’em when poor Benedick departed: and now she’s took herself. Eh, deary me! but I cannot stay me from weeping when I think on my poor Benedick. He was that staunch, he’d sure ha’ been took if he’d ha’ lived! It makes my heart fair sore to think on’t!”
“Nay, Sens, that is rather a cause for thanksgiving.”
“You always was one for thanksgiving, Mistress Benden.”
“Surely; I were an ingrate else.”
“Well, I may be a nigrate too, though I wis not what it be without ’tis a blackamoor, and I’m not that any way, as I knows: but look you, good Mistress, that’s what I alway wasn’t. ’Tis all well and good for them as can to sing psalms in dens o’ lions; but I’m alway looking for to be ate up. I can’t do it, and that’s flat.”
“The Lord can shut the lions’ mouths, Sens.”
“Very good, Mistress; but how am I to know as they be shut?”
“‘They that trust in the Lord shall not want any good thing.’” A sudden moan escaped Alice’s lips just after she had said this, the result of an attempt to move slightly. Sens Bradbridge was on her knees beside her in a moment.
“Why, my dear heart, how’s this, now? Be you sick, or what’s took you?”
“I was kept nine weeks, Sens, on foul straw, with never a shift of clothes, and no meat save bread and water, the which has brought me to this pass, being so lame of rheumatic pains that I cannot scarce move without moaning.”
“Did ever man hear the like! Didn’t you trust in the Lord, then, Mistress, an’t like you?—or be soft beds and well-dressed meat and clean raiment not good things?”
Alice Benden’s bright little laugh struck poor desponding Sens as a very strange thing.
“Maybe a little of both, old friend. Surely there were four sore weeks when I was shut up in Satan’s prison, no less than in man’s, and I trusted not the Lord as I should have done—”
“Well, forsooth, and no marvel!”
“And as to beds and meat and raiment—well, I suppose they were not good things for me at that time, else should my Father have provided them for me.”
Poor Sens shook her head slowly and sorrowfully.
“Nay, now, Mistress Benden, I can’t climb up there, nohow.—’Tis a brave place where you be, I cast no doubt, but I shall never get up yonder.”
“But you have stood to the truth, Sens?—else should you not have been here.”
“Well, Mistress! I can’t believe black’s white, can I, to get forth o’ trouble?—nor I can’t deny the Lord, by reason ’tisn’t right comfortable to confess Him? But as for comfort—and my poor little maids all alone, wi’ never a penny—and my poor dear heart of a man as they’d ha’ took, sure as eggs is eggs, if so be he’d been there—why, ’tis enough to crush the heart out of any woman. But I can’t speak lies by reason I’m out o’ heart.”
“Well said, true heart! The Lord is God of the valleys, no less than of the hills; and if thou be sooner overwhelmed by the waters than other, He shall either carry thee through the stream, or make the waters lower when thou comest to cross.”
“I would I’d as brave a spirit as yourn, Mistress Benden.”
“Thou hast as good a God, Sens, and as strong a Saviour. And mind thou, ’tis the weak and the lambs that He carries; the strong sheep may walk alongside. ‘He knoweth our frame,’ both of body and soul. Rest thou sure, that if thine heart be true to Him, so long as He sees thou hast need to be borne of Him, He shall not put thee down to stumble by thyself.”
“Well!” said Sens, with a long sigh, “I reckon, if I’m left to myself, I sha’n’t do nought but stumble. I always was a poor creature; Benedick had to do no end o’ matters for me: and I’m poorer than ever now he’s gone, so I think the Lord’ll scarce forget me; but seems somehow as I can’t take no comfort in it.”
“‘Blessed are the poor in spirit!’” said Alice softly. “The ‘God of all comfort,’ Sens, is better than all His comforts.”
Chapter Twenty Eight.
Behind the arras.
“You had best make up your mind, Grena, whilst you yet may. This may be the last chance to get away hence that you shall have afore—” Mr Roberts hesitated; but his meaning was clear enough. “It doth seem me, now we have this opportunity through Master Laxton’s journey, it were well-nigh a sin to miss it. He is a sober, worthy man, and kindly belike; he should take good care of you; and going so nigh to Shardeford, he could drop you well-nigh at your mother’s gates. Now I pray you, Grena, be ruled by me, and settle it that you shall go without delay. He cannot wait beyond to-morrow to set forth.”
“I grant it all, Tom, and I thank you truly for your brotherly care. But it alway comes to the same end, whensoever I meditate thereon: I cannot leave you and Gertrude.”
“But wherefore no, Grena? Surely we should miss your good company, right truly: but to know that you were safe were compensation enough for that. True should be old enough to keep the house—there be many housewives younger—or if no; surely the old servants can go on as they are used, without your oversight. Margery and Osmund, at least—”
“They lack not my oversight, and assuredly not Gertrude’s. But you would miss me, Tom: and I could not be happy touching True.”
“Wherefore? Why, Grena, you said yourself they should lay no hand on her.”
“Nor will they. But Gertrude is one that lacks a woman about her that loveth her, and will yet be firm with her. I cannot leave the child—Paulina’s child—to go maybe to an ill end, for the lack of my care and love. She sees not the snares about her heedless feet, and would most likely be tangled in them ere you saw them. Maids lack mothers more than even fathers; and True hath none save me.”
“Granted. But for all that, Grena, I would not sacrifice you.”
“Tom, if the Lord would have me here, be sure He shall not shut me up in Canterbury Castle. And if He lacks me there, I am ready to go. He will see to you and True in that case.”
“But if He lack you at Shardeford, Grena? How if this journey of Mr Laxton be His provision for you, so being?”
There was silence for a moment.
“Ay,” said Grena Holland then, “if you and Gertrude go with me. If not, I shall know it is not the Lord’s bidding.”
“I! I never dreamed thereof.”
“Suppose, then, you dream thereof now.”
“Were it not running away from duty?”
“Methinks not. ‘When they persecute you in one city, flee ye into another,’ said our Lord. I see no duty that you have to leave. Were you a Justice of Peace, like your brother, it might be so: but what such have you? But one thing do I see—and you must count the cost, Tom. It may be your estate shall be sequestered, and all your goods taken to the Queen’s use. ’Tis perchance a choice betwixt life and liberty on the one hand, and land and movables on the other.”
Mr Roberts walked up and down the room, lost in deep thought. It was a hard choice to make: yet “all that a man hath will he give for his life.”
“Oh for the days of King Edward the First,” he sighed. “Verily, we valued not our blessings whilst we had them.”
Grena’s look was sympathising; but she left him to think out the question.
“If I lose Primrose Croft,” he said meditatively, “the maids will have nought.”
“They will have Shardeford when my mother dieth.”
“You,” he corrected. “You were the elder sister, Grena.”
“What is mine is theirs and yours,” she said quietly.
“You may wed, Grena.”
She gave a little amused laugh. “Methinks, Tom, you may leave that danger out of the question. Shardeford Hall will some day be Gertrude’s and Pandora’s.”
“We had alway thought of it as Pandora’s, if it came to the maids, and that Gertrude should have Primrose Croft. But if that go—and ’tis not unlike; in especial if we leave Kent— Grena, I know not what to do for the best.”
“Were it not best to ask the Lord, Tom?”
“But how shall I read the answer? Here be no Urim and Thummim to work by.”
“I cannot say how. But of one thing am I sure; the Lord never disappointeth nor confoundeth the soul that trusts in Him.”
“Well, Grena, let us pray over it, and sleep on it. Perchance we may see what to do for the best by morning light. But one thing I pray you, be ready to go, that there may be no time lost if we decide ay and not nay.”
“That will I see to for us all.”
Mr Roberts and Grena left the dining-room, where this conversation had been held, shutting the door behind them. She could be heard going upstairs, he into the garden by the back way. For a few seconds there was dead silence in the room; then the arras parted, and a concealed listener came out. In those days rooms were neither papered nor painted. They were either wainscoted high up the wall with panelled wood, or simply white-washed, and large pieces of tapestry hung round on heavy iron hooks. This tapestry was commonly known as arras, from the name of the French town where it was chiefly woven; and behind it, since it stood forward from the wall, was a most convenient place for a spy. The concealed listener came into the middle of the room. Her face worked with conflicting emotions. She stood for a minute, as it were, fighting out a battle with herself. At length she clenched her hand as if the decision were reached, and said aloud and passionately, “I will not!” That conclusion arrived at, she went hastily but softly out of the room, and closed the door noiselessly.
Mistress Grena was very busy in her own room, secretly packing up such articles as she had resolved to take in the event of her journey being made. She had told Margery, the old housekeeper, that she was going to be engaged, and did not wish to be disturbed. If any visitors came Mistress Gertrude could entertain them; and she desired Margery to transmit her commands to that effect to the young lady. That Gertrude herself would interrupt her she had very little fear. They had few tastes and ideas in common. Gertrude would spend the afternoon in the parlour with her embroidery or her virginals—the piano of that time—and was not likely to come near her. This being the case, Mistress Grena was startled and disturbed to hear a rap at her door. Trusting that it was Mr Roberts who wanted her, and who was the only likely person, she went to open it.
“May I come in, Aunt Grena?” said Gertrude.
For a moment Grena hesitated. Then she stepped back and let her niece enter. Her quick, quiet eyes discerned that something was the matter. This was a new Gertrude at her door, a grave, troubled Gertrude, brought there by something of more importance than usual.
“Well, niece, what is it?”
“Aunt Grena, give me leave for once to speak freely.”
“So do, my dear maid.”
“You and my father are talking of escape to Shardeford, but you scarce know whether to go or no. Let me tell you, and trust me, for my knowledge is costly matter. Let us go.”
Grena stood in amazed consternation. She had said and believed that God would show them what to do, but the very last person in her world through whose lips she expected Him to speak was Gertrude Roberts.
“How—what—who told you? an angel?” she gasped incoherently.
A laugh, short and unmirthful, was the answer.
“Truly, no,” said Gertrude. “It was a fallen angel if it were.”
“What mean you, niece? This is passing strange!” said Grena, in a troubled tone.
“Aunt, I have a confession to make. Despise me if you will; you cannot so do more than I despise myself. ’Tis ill work despising one’s self; but I must, and as penalty for mine evil deeds I am forcing myself to own them to you. You refuse to leave me, for my mother’s sake, to go to an ill end; neither will I so leave you.”
“When heard you me so to speak, Gertrude?”
“Not an hour since, Aunt Grena.”
“You were not present!”
“I was, little as you guessed it. I was behind the arras.”
“Wicked, mean, dishonourable girl!” cried Mistress Grena, in a mixture of horror, confusion, and alarm.
“I own it, Aunt Grena,” said Gertrude, with a quiet humility which was not natural to her, and which touched Grena against her will. “But hear me out, I pray you, for ’tis of moment to us all that you should so do.”
A silent inclination of her aunt’s head granted her permission to proceed.
“The last time that I went to shrift, Father Bastian bade me tell him if I knew of a surety that you or my father had any thought to leave Kent. That could not I say, of course, and so much I told him. Then he bade me be diligent and discover the same. ‘But after what fashion?’ said I; for I do ensure you that his meaning came not into mine head afore he spake it in plain language. When at last I did conceive that he would have me to spy upon you, at the first I was struck with horror. You had so learned me, Aunt Grena, that the bare thought of such a thing was hateful unto me. This methinks he perceived, and he set him to reason with me, that the command of holy Church sanctified the act done for her service, which otherwise had been perchance unmeet to be done. Still I yielded not, and then he told me flat, that without I did this thing he would not grant me absolution of my sins. Then, but not till then, I gave way. I hid me behind the arras this morning, looking that you should come to hold discourse in that chamber where, saving for meat, you knew I was not wont to be. I hated the work no whit less than at the first; but the fear of holy Church bound me. I heard you say, Aunt Grena”—Gertrude’s voice softened as Grena had rarely heard it—“that you would not leave Father and me—that you could not be happy touching me—that I had no mother save you, and you would not cast me aside to go to an ill end. I saw that Father reckoned it should be to your own hurt if you tarried. And it struck me to the heart that you should be thinking to serve me the while I was planning how to betray you. Yet if Father Bastian refused to shrive me, what should come of me? And all at once, as I stood there hearkening, a word from the Psalter bolted in upon me, a verse that I mind Mother caused me to learn long time agone: ‘I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and so Thou forgavest the wickedness of my sin.’ Then said I to myself, What need I trouble if the priest will not shrive me, when I can go straight unto the Lord and confess to Him? Then came another verse, as if to answer me, that I wist Father Bastian should have brought forth in like case, ‘Whatsoever sins ye retain, they are retained,’ and ‘Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.’ I could not, I own, all at once see my way through these. They did look to say, ‘Unto whom the priest, that is the Church, denieth shrift, the same hath no forgiveness of God.’ For a minute I was staggered, till a blind man came to help me up. Aunt Grena, you mind that blind man in the ninth chapter of Saint John’s Gospel? He was cast forth of the Church, as the Church was in that day; and it was when our Lord heard that they had cast him forth, that He sought him and bade him believe only on Him, the Son of God. You marvel, Aunt, I may well see, that such meditations as these should come to your foolish maid Gertrude. But I was at a point, and an hard point belike. I had to consider my ways, whether I would or no, when I came to this trackless moor, and wist not which way to go, with a precipice nigh at hand. So now, Aunt Grena, I come to speak truth unto you, and to confess that I have been a wicked maid and a fool; and if you count me no more worth the serving or the saving I have demerited that you should thus account me. Only if so be, I beseech you, save yourself!”
Gertrude’s eyes were wet as she turned away.
Grena followed her and drew the girl into her arms.
“My child,” she said, “I never held thee so well worth love and care as now. So be it; we will go to Shardeford.”
Chapter Twenty Nine.
Whereof the Hero is Jack.
“Ay, we must go, then,” said Mr Roberts, with a long-drawn sigh. “This discovery leaves us no choice. For howso God and we may pardon the child, Father Bastian will not so. We must go ere he find it out, and leave Primrose Croft to his fate.”
“Father!” exclaimed Gertrude suddenly, “I beseech you, hear me. Uncle Anthony conforms, and he is kindly-hearted as man could wish. If he would come hither, and have a care of Primrose Croft, as though he held it by gift or under lease from you, they should never think to disturb him.”
“The maid’s wit hath hit the nail on the head!” returned her father, in high satisfaction. “But how shall I give him to know, without letting forth our secret?—and once get it on paper, and it might as well be given to the town crier. ‘Walls have ears,’ saith the old saw, but paper hath a tongue. And I cannot tell him by word of mouth, sith he is now at Sandwich, and turneth not home afore Thursday. Elsewise that were good counsel.”
“Ask True,” suggested Mistress Grena with a smile. “The young wit is the readiest amongst us, as methinks.”
“Under your correction, Father, could you not write a letter, and entrust it to Margery, to be sent to Uncle as Thursday even—giving it into her hand the last minute afore we depart? Is she not trustworthy, think you?”
“She is trustworthy enough, if she be let be. But I misdoubt if her wits should carry her safe through a discourse with Father Bastian, if he were bent on winning the truth from her. I could trust Osmund better for that; but I looked to take him withal.”
“Give me leave then, Father, to walk down to Uncle’s, as if I wist not of his absence, and slip the letter into one of his pockets. He alway leaveth one of his gowns a-hanging in the hall.”
“And if his Martha were seized with a cleaning fever whilst he is thence, and turned out the pocket, where should we then be? Nay, True, that shall not serve. I can think of no means but that you twain set forth alone—to wit, without me—under guidance of Osmund, and that I follow, going round by Sandwich, having there seen and advertised my brother.”
“Were there no danger that way, Tom?”
“There is danger every way,” replied Mr Roberts, with a groan. “But maybe there is as little that way as any: and I would fain save Gertrude’s inheritance if it may be.”
“At the cost of your liberty, Father? Nay, not so, I entreat you!” cried Gertrude, with a flash of that noble nature which seemed to have been awakened in her. “Let mine inheritance go as it will.”
“As God wills,” gently put in Mistress Grena.
“As God wills,” repeated Gertrude: “and keep you safe.”
Mistress Grena laid her hand on her brother’s shoulder.
“Tom,” she said, “let us trust the Lord in this matter. Draw you up, if you will, a lease of Primrose Croft to the Justice, and leave it in the house in some safe place. God can guide his hand to it, if He will. Otherwise, let us leave it be.”
That was the course resolved on in the end. It was also decided that they should not attempt to repeat the night escape which had already taken place. They were to set forth openly in daylight, but separately, and on three several pretexts. Mistress Grena was to go on a professed visit to Christabel, old Osmund escorting her; but instead of returning home afterwards, she was to go forward to Seven Roods, and there await the arrival of Mr Roberts. He was to proceed to his cloth-works at Cranbrook, as he usually did on a Tuesday; and when the time came to return home to supper, was to go to Seven Roods and rejoin Grena. To Gertrude, at her own request, was allotted the hardest and most perilous post of all—to remain quietly at home after her father and aunt had departed, engaged in her usual occupations, until afternoon, when she was to go out as if for a walk, accompanied by the great house-dog, Jack, and meet her party a little beyond Seven Roods. Thence they were to journey to Maidstone and Rochester, whence they could take ship to the North. Jack, in his life-long character of an attached and incorruptible protector, was to go with them. He would be quite as ready, in the interests of his friends, to bite a priest as a layman, and would show his teeth at the Sheriff with as little compunction as at a street-sweeper. Moreover, like all of his race, Jack was a forgiving person. Many a time had Gertrude teased and tormented him for her own amusement, but nobody expected Jack to remember it against her, when he was summoned to protect her from possible enemies. But perhaps the greatest advantage in Jack’s guardianship of Gertrude was the fact that there had always been from time immemorial to men—and dogs—an unconquerable aversion, not always tacit, especially on Jack’s part, between him and the Rev. Mr Bastian. If there was an individual in the world who might surely be relied on to object to the reverend gentleman’s appearance, that individual was Jack: and if any person existed in whose presence Mr Bastian was likely to hesitate about attaching himself to Gertrude’s company, that person was Jack also. Jack never had been able to see why the priest should visit his master, and had on several occasions expressed his opinion on that point with much decision and lucidity. If, therefore, Mr Bastian would keep away from the house until Gertrude started on her eventful walk, he was not very likely to trouble her afterwards.
The priest had fully intended to call at Primrose Croft that very afternoon, to see Mr Roberts, or if he were absent, Mistress Grena; but he preferred the gentleman, as being usually more manageable than the lady. He meant to terrify the person whom he might see, by vague hints of something which he had heard—and which was not to be mentioned—that it might be mournfully necessary for him to report to the authorities if more humility and subordination to his orders were not shown. But he was detained, first by a brother priest who wished to consult him in a difficulty, then by the Cardinal’s sumner, who brought documents from his Eminence, and lastly by a beggar requesting alms. Having at length freed himself from these interruptions, he set out for Primrose Croft. He had passed through the gates, and was approaching the door, when he saw an unwelcome sight which brought him to a sudden stop. That sight was a long feathery tail, waving above a clump of ferns to the left. Was it possible that the monster was loose? The gate was between Mr Bastian and that tail, in an infinitesimal space of time. Ignorant of the presence of the enemy, the wind being in the wrong direction, Jack finished at leisure his inspection of the ferns, and bounded after Gertrude.
“How exceedingly annoying!” said Mr Bastian to himself. “If that black demon had been out of the way, and safely chained up, as he ought to have been, I could have learned from the girl whether she had overheard anything. I am sure it was her hood that I saw disappearing behind the laurels. How very provoking! It must be Satan that sent the creature this way at this moment. However, she will come to shrift, of course, on Sunday, and then I shall get to know.”
So saying, Mr Bastian turned round and went home, Gertrude sauntered leisurely through the garden, went out by the wicket-gate, which Jack preferred to clear at a bound, and walked rather slowly up the road, followed by her sable escort. She was afraid of seeming in haste until she was well out of the immediate neighbourhood. The clouds were so far threatening that she felt it safe to carry her cloak—a very necessary travelling companion in days when there were no umbrellas. She had stitched sundry gold coins and some jewellery into her underclothing, but she could bring away nothing else. John Banks passed her on the road, with a mutual recognition; two disreputable-looking tramps surveyed her covetously, but ventured on no nearer approach when Jack remarked, “If you do—!” The old priest of Cranbrook, riding past—a quiet, kindly old man for whom Jack entertained no aversion—blessed her in response to her reverence. Two nuns, with inscrutable white marble faces, took no apparent notice of her. A woman with a basket on her arm stopped her to ask the way to Frittenden. Passing them all, she turned away from the road just before reaching Staplehurst, and took the field pathway which led past Seven Roods. Here Jack showed much uneasiness, evidently being aware that some friend of his had taken that way before them, and he decidedly disapproved of Gertrude’s turning aside without going up to the house. The path now led through several fields, and across a brook spanned by a little rustic bridge, to the stile where it diverged into the high road from Cranbrook to Maidstone.
As they reached the last field, they saw Tabitha Hall coming to meet them.
“Glad to see you, Mistress Gertrude! All goes well. The Master and Mistress Grena’s somewhat beyond, going at foot’s pace, and looking out for you. So you won away easy, did you? I reckoned you would.”
“Oh, ay, easy enough!” said Gertrude.
But she never knew how near she had been to that which would have made it almost if not wholly impossible.
“But how shall I ride, I marvel?” she asked, half-laughing. “I can scarce sit on my father’s saddle behind him.”
“Oh, look you, we have a pillion old Mistress Hall was wont to ride on, so Tom took and strapped it on at back of Master’s saddle,” said Tabitha, with that elaborate carelessness that people assume when they know they have done a kindness, but want to make it appear as small as possible.
“I am truly beholden to you, Mistress Hall; but I must not linger, so I can only pray God be wi’ you,” said Gertrude, using the phrase which has now become stereotyped into “good-bye.”
“But, Mistress Gertrude! won’t you step up to the house, and take a snack ere you go further? The fresh butter’s but now churned, and eggs new-laid, and—”
“I thank you much, Mistress Hall, but I must not tarry now. May God of His mercy keep you and all yours safe!”
And Gertrude, calling Jack, who was deeply interested in a rabbit-hole, hastened on to the Maidstone Road.
“There’s somewhat come over Mistress Gertrude,” said Tabitha, as she re-entered her own house. “Never saw her so meek-spoken in all my life. She’s not one to be cowed by peril, neither. Friswith, where on earth hast set that big poker? Hast forgot that I keep it handy for Father Bastian and the catchpoll, whichever of ’em lacks it first? Good lack, but I cannot away with that going astray! Fetch it hither this minute. Up in the chamber! Bless me, what could the maid be thinking on? There, set it down in the chimney-corner to keep warm; it’ll not take so long to heat then. Well! I trust they’ll win away all safe; but I’d as lief not be in their shoon.”
A faint sound came from the outside. Jack had spied his friends, and was expressing his supreme delight at having succeeded in once more piecing together the scattered fragments of his treasure.
Chapter Thirty.
Puzzled.
Old Margery Danby, the housekeeper at Primrose Croft, was more thoroughly trustworthy than Mr Roberts had supposed, not only in will—for which he gave her full credit—but in capacity, which he had doubted. Born in the first year of Henry the Seventh, Margery had heard stirring tales in her childhood from parents who had lived through the Wars of the Roses, and she too well remembered Kett’s rebellion and the enclosure riots in King Edward’s days, not to know that “speech is silvern, but silence is golden.” The quiet, observant old woman knew perfectly well that something was “in the wind.” It was not her master’s wont to look back, and say, “Farewell, Margery!” before he mounted his horse on a Tuesday morning for his weekly visit to the cloth-works; and it was still less usual for Gertrude to remark, “Good-morrow, good Margery!” before she went out for a walk with Jack. Mistress Grena, too, had called her into her own room the night before, and told her she had thought for some time of making her a little present, as a recognition of her long care and fidelity, and had given her two royals—the older name for half-sovereigns. Margery silently “put two and two together,” and the result was to convince her that something was about to happen. Nor did she suffer from any serious doubts as to what it was. She superintended the preparation of supper on that eventful day with a settled conviction that nobody would be at home to eat it; and when the hours passed away, and nobody returned, the excitement of Cicely the chamber-maid, and Dick the scullion-boy, was not in the least shared by her. Moreover, she had seen with some amusement Mr Bastian’s approach and subsequent retreat, and she expected to see him again ere long. When the bell rang the next morning about eight o’clock, Margery went to answer it herself, and found herself confronting the gentleman she had anticipated.
“Christ save all here!” said the priest, in reply to Margery’s reverential curtsey. “Is your master within, good woman?”
“No, Father, an’t like you.”
“No? He is not wont to go forth thus early. Mistress Grena?”
“No, Sir, nor Mistress Gertrude neither.”
The priest lifted his eyebrows. “All hence! whither be they gone?”
“An’ it please you, Sir, I know not.”
“That is strange. Went they together?”
“No, Sir, separate.”
“Said they nought touching their absence?”
“Not to me, Father.”
“Have you no fantasy at all whither they went?”
“I took it, Sir, that my master went to the works, as he is wont of a Tuesday; and I thought Mistress Grena was a-visiting some friend. Touching Mistress Gertrude I can say nought.”
“She went not forth alone, surely?”
“She took Jack withal, Sir—none else.”
The conviction was slowly growing in Mr Bastian’s mind that the wave of that feathery tail had deprived him of the only means of communication which he was ever likely to have with Gertrude Roberts. “The sly minx!” he said to himself. Then aloud to Margery, “Do I take you rightly that all they departed yesterday, and have not yet returned?”
“That is sooth, Father.”
Margery stood holding the door, with a calm, stolid face, which looked as if an earthquake would neither astonish nor excite her. Mr Bastian took another arrow from his quiver, one which he generally found to do considerable execution.
“Woman,” he said sternly, “you know more than you have told me!”
“Father, with all reverence, I know no more than you.”
Her eyes met his with no appearance of insincerity.
“Send Osmund to me,” he said, walking into the house, and laying down his hat and stick on the settle in the hall.
“Sir, under your good pleasure, Osmund went with Mistress.”
“And turned not again?”
“He hath not come back here, Sir.”
“Then they have taken flight!” cried the priest in a passion. “Margery Danby, as you fear the judgment of the Church, and value her favour, I bid you tell me whither they are gone.”
“Sir, even for holy Church’s favour, I cannot say that which I know not.”
“On your soul’s salvation, do you not know it?” he said solemnly.
“On my soul’s salvation, Sir, I know it not.”
The priest strode up and down the hall more than once. Then he came and faced Margery, who was now standing beside the wide fireplace in the hall.
“Have you any guess whither your master may be gone, or the gentlewomen?”
“I’ve guessed a many things since yester-even, Sir,” answered Margery quietly, “but which is right and which is wrong I can’t tell.”
“When Mistress Collenwood and Mistress Pandora went hence secretly in the night-time, knew you thereof, beforehand?”
“Surely no, Father.”
“Had you any ado with their departing?”
“The first thing I knew or guessed thereof, Father, was the next morrow, when I came into the hall and saw them not.”
Mr Bastian felt baffled on every side. That his prey had eluded him just in time to escape the trap he meant to lay for them, was manifest. What his next step was to be, was not equally clear.
“Well!” he said at last with a disappointed air, “if you know nought, ’tis plain you can tell nought. I must essay to find some that can.”
“I have told you all I know, Father,” was the calm answer. But Margery did not say that she had told all she thought, nor that if she had known more she would have revealed it.
Mr Bastian took up his hat and stick, pausing for a moment at the door to ask, “Is that black beast come back?”
“Jack is not returned, Sir,” answered the housekeeper.
It was with a mingled sense of relief and uneasiness on that point that the priest took the road through the village. That Jack was out of the way was a delicious relief. But suppose Jack should spring suddenly on him out of some hedge, or on turning a corner? Out of the way might turn out to be all the more surely in it.
Undisturbed, however, by any vision of a black face and a feathery tail, Mr Bastian reached Roger Hall’s door. Nell opened it, and unwillingly admitted that her master was at home, Mr Bastian being so early that Roger had not yet left his house for the works. Roger received him in his little parlour, to which Christie had not yet been carried.
“Hall, are you aware of your master’s flight?”
Roger Hall opened his eyes in genuine amazement.
“No, Sir! Is he gone, then?”
“He never returned home after leaving the works yesterday.”
Roger’s face expressed nothing but honest concern for his master’s welfare. “He left the works scarce past three of the clock,” said he, “and took the road toward Primrose Croft. God grant none ill hath befallen him!”
“Nought o’ the sort,” said the priest bluntly. “The gentlewomen be gone belike, and Osmund with them. ’Tis a concerted plan, not a doubt thereof: and smelleth of the fire (implies heretical opinions), or I mistake greatly. Knew you nought thereof? Have a care how you make answer!”
“Father, you have right well amazed me but to hear it. Most surely I knew nought, saving only that when I returned home yestre’en, my little maid told me Mistress Grena had been so good as to visit her, and had brought her a cake and a posy of flowers from the garden. But if Osmund were with her or no, that did I not hear.”
“Was Mistress Grena wont to visit your daughter?”
“By times, Father: not very often.”
As all his neighbours must be aware of Mistress Grena’s visit, Roger thought it the wisest plan to be perfectly frank on that point.
“Ask at Christabel if she wist whether Osmund came withal.”
Roger made the inquiry, and returned with the information that Christabel did not know. From her couch she could only see the horse’s ears, and had not noticed who was with it.
“’Tis strange matter,” said the priest severely, “that a gentleman of means and station, with his sister, and daughter, and servant, could disappear thus utterly, and none know thereof!”
“It is, Father, in very deed,” replied Roger sympathisingly.
“I pray you, Hall, make full inquiry at the works, and give me to wit if aught be known thereof. Remember, you are somewhat under a cloud from your near kinship to Alice Benden, and diligence in this matter may do you a good turn with holy Church.”
“Sir, I will make inquiry at the works,” was the answer, which did not convey Roger’s intention to make no use of the inquiries that could damage his master, nor his settled conviction that no information was to be had.
The only person at all likely to know more than himself was the cashier at the works, since he lived between Cranbrook and Primrose Croft, and Roger carefully timed his inquiries so as not to include him. The result was what he expected—no one could tell him anything. He quickly and diligently communicated this interesting fact to the priest’s servant, his master not being at home; and Mr Bastian was more puzzled than ever. The nine days’ wonder gradually died down. On the Thursday evening Mr Justice Roberts came home, and was met by the news of his brother’s disappearance, with his family. He was so astonished that he sat open-mouthed, knife and spoon in hand, while his favourite dish of broiled fowl grew cold, until he had heard all that Martha had to tell him. Supper was no sooner over, than off he set to Primrose Croft.
“Well, Madge, old woman!” said he to the old housekeeper, who had once been his nurse, “this is strange matter, surely! Is all true that Martha tells me? Be all they gone, and none wist how nor whither?”
“Come in, and sit you down by the fire, Master Anthony,” said Margery, in whose heart was a very soft spot for her sometime nursling, “and I’ll tell you all I know. Here’s the master’s keys, they’ll maybe be safer in your hands than mine; he didn’t leave ’em wi’ me, but I went round the house and picked ’em all up, and locked everything away from them prying maids and that young jackanapes of a Dickon. Some he must ha’ took with him; but he’s left the key of the old press, look you, and that label hanging from it.”
The Justice looked at the label, and saw his own name written in his brother’s writing.
“Ha! maybe he would have me open the press and search for somewhat. Let us go to his closet, Madge. Thou canst tell me the rest there, while I see what this meaneth.”
“There’s scarce any rest to tell, Mr Anthony; only they are all gone—Master, and Mistress Grena, and Mistress Gertrude, and Osmund, and bay Philbert, and the black mare, and old Jack.”
“What, Jack gone belike! Dear heart alive! Why, Madge, that hath little look of coming again.”
“It hasn’t, Mr Anthony; and one of Mistress Gertrude’s boxes, that she keeps her gems in, lieth open and empty in her chamber.”
The Justice whistled softly as he fitted the key in the lock.