Chapter Four.
The Root of the Matter.
“My Christ He is the Heaven of Heavens—
My Christ what shall I call?
My Christ is first, my Christ is last,
My Christ is all in all.”
John Mason.
As Agnes toiled home with her weary burden, she met her own special favourite, little Will.
“Look you, Mistress Agnes!” cried little Will, triumphantly holding up his horn-book.
“I can say all my Christ-Cross-Row (alphabet)—every letter!”
“Dear heart!” returned Agnes, sympathising in her little friend’s pleasure.
“And as to-morrow I am to join the letters!” exclaimed little Will again, in high exultation.
“I trust thou wilt be a good lad, Will, and apply thee diligently.”
“Oh, ay,” said Will, dismissing that part of the question somewhat curtly. “And look you, I met, an half-hour gone, with the Black Friar that preached at the Cross th’ other morrow; and he saw my horn-book, and asked at me if I knew the same. And when I said I so did, what did he, think you, but sat him down of a stone, and would needs have me for to say it all o’er unto him. And I made but one only blunder; I said, ‘Q, S, R,’ in the stead of ‘Q, R, S.’ And he strake mine head, and said I was a good lad, and he would I should go on with my learning till I might read in the great Bible that lieth chained in the Minster.”
“Well-a-day! did he so?” responded Agnes.
“Ay, so did he. But wot you what Christie Marvell saith? He saith ’tis rare evil doing that any save a priest should read in yon big book, and he hath heard his father for to say the same. And he saith old Father Dan, the Cordelier, that is alway up and down hereabout, he said unto him that he would not for no money that he should learn to read the Evangel, for that it should do him a mischief. What think you, Mistress Agnes?”
“Methinks, Will, thou shalt do well to give good heed unto the Black Friar, and to thy master at the school, and leave Christie Marvell a-be with his idle talk.”
“Nay, go to, Mistress Agnes! ’tis Father Dan’s talk.”
“Then tarry till Father Dan tell thee so much himself. It may well be that Christie took not his words rightly.”
“Ay,” said the child, doubtfully. “But what manner of mischief, think you, meant he? Should it cast a spell on me, or give me the ague?”
Little Will, as we have already seen, was the child of a superstitious mother. To hear the tap of a death-watch was sufficient to make Mistress Flint lose a night’s sleep; and a person who disbelieved in fairies she would have considered next door to a reprobate. But Agnes was remarkably free from such ideas for her time, when few were entirely devoid of them; and she laughed at little Will’s fancy.
“Well,” said he, “any way, when I can read in the great Bible, Mistress Agnes, then will I read unto you, and you shall come to the Minster and hear me. Christie’s mother saith there be right pretty stories therein.”
Like many another in those days, into the household of Henry and Cicely Marvell, the Gospel had brought not peace, but a sword. The husband, a stern, morose man, was fondly attached to the beggarly elements of Roman ceremonials; while the wife had received and hidden the Word in her heart, and though too much afraid of her husband to venture far, contrived now and then to drop a word for Christ’s Gospel. Christie, the troublesome boy, cared for none of these things, and made game of the views of each parent in turn.
Agnes smilingly bade good-bye to her ambitious little friend Will, for they had now reached Mistress Winter’s door. A scolding awaited her, as usual, first for “dawdling,” and then for spilling a few drops of water on the brick floor as she set down the heavy pails. But Agnes scarcely heeded it, for her mind was full of a new project. It would be some time before little Will could read, and longer still before he could see over the Minster desk, where the great Bible lay chained. But why should she wait for that? She dimly remembered, in long past days, when her aunt was living, having several times gone with her on Sunday afternoons to vespers in the Cathedral, and heard some one reading at the desk in the nave. Then she had not cared to listen. Why should she not go to hear it now?
Of political events Agnes knew little, and thought less. She could barely have told who was on the throne, had she been asked. She had watched alike tumult and pageant without any intelligent notion of what was passing. Nor had she any idea that during those past days, when such things had no interest for her, the opportunity of using them had been passing away; and that in a very few weeks the public reading of the Bible would be perilous to those who had the courage to dare it. Imprisonment would soon await any layman who should dare to read to another the Word of Life.
It often occurred that projects had to dwell in Agnes’s mind for some time before she had an opportunity to put them into execution. That such should be the case with this one gave her no surprise. Generally speaking, after mass on Sunday, Joan and Dorothy donned their finest clothes, and went out on a merry-making expedition, while Mistress Winter, also in grand array, preferred to entertain her neighbours at home. She considered Agnes on these occasions as one too many, and usually contrived to send her on some errand to a distance; but now and then, when no errand was forthcoming, she had the Sunday afternoon to herself. Five Sundays passed after the project had taken shape in her mind, and no leisure had yet come to Agnes. The Saturday arrived, the eve of the sixth Sunday, and she was still in expectation of fulfilling her hopes in some happy future. The hope was communicated to Cicely Marvell, whom Agnes met in returning from the pump, with certainty of sympathy on her part.
The full pails were only just set down on the kitchen floor, when in bustled Mistress Flint, with a dish-cloth in her hand, which she had not waited to lay down, so eager was she to utter what she came to say.
“Go to, Gossip Winter! Heard you the news?”
“News, gramercy! Who e’er hath the grace to tell me a shred thereof?” returned Mistress Winter crustily. “What now, Gossip?”
“Forsooth, the King’s Grace is departed.”
“Alack the day! Who saith it?”
“Marry, my Lord Mayor himself hath proclaimed it at the Cross, and as Monday are my Lords of the Council to ride unto the Tower for to salute the new Queen.”
“The new Queen! Who is she, belike?” demanded Mistress Winter, who did not usually trouble her head with politics. She was standing by the fire with a frying-pan in her hand, arrested in her occupation by surprise and curiosity, as Mistress Flint had been in hers.
“Why, what think you? Folk say that heard the same, that the King’s Highness hath left the Crown by will to his cousin, my Lady Jane Dudley, and hath put by his own sisters; and she shall be proclaimed as to-morrow in Cheapside.”
“Dear heart alive!” cried Mistress Winter. “And what say my Ladies the King’s sisters, that be thus left out in the cold?”
“That is as it may be,” replied Mistress Flint mysteriously. “My good man saith, if the Lady Mary suffer all tamely, then is she not the maid he took her to be.”
“Lack-a-day! but I do verily hope siege shall be ne’er laid to London! It should go ill with us that dwell in the outskirts.”
“You say well, Gossip, in very deed. The blessed saints have a care of us! as metrusteth they shall.”
“Not they belike!” growled Mistress Winter, resuming her suspended proceedings with the frying-pan. “They shall be every one a-looking out for the Lady Jane.”
Mistress Flint came nearer, and replied in a mysterious whisper.
“Scantly so, as methinks, Gossip, when she is of the new learning, if folk speak sooth touching her. The saints and angels shall trouble them rare little about her. Trust me, they shall go with the Lady Mary, every man of them.”
“Say you so?” demanded Mistress Winter. “Why, then shall the old learning come in again, an’ she win.”
“Ay, I warrant you!” responded her neighbour.
Mistress Winter fried her rashers with a meditative face.
“Doll!” said she, when Mistress Flint and her dish-cloth had departed, “whither is become Saint Thomas of Canterbury?”
“Go to! what wis I?” returned Dorothy. “He was cast with yon old lumber in the back attic, when King Edward’s Grace come in. He hath been o’ no count this great while.”
“Fetch him forth,” said Mistress Winter; “and, Agnes, do thou cleanse him well. If my Lady Jane win, why, ’tis but that we love not to have no dirt in the house: but if my Lady Mary, then shall he go to the gilder, and I will set him of an high place, for to be seen. Haste thee about it.”
Half an hour later, Agnes (to whom Dorothy deputed the dusty search) came down from the attic, carrying a battered wooden doll on a stand, which had once been gaudily painted, but was now worn and soiled, deprived of an arm, and gashed in sundry places, having been used as a chopping-block for a short time during the palmy days of the Reformation.
“He’ll lack a new nose,” remarked Mistress Winter, thoughtfully considering the poor ill-used article. “And an arm must he have, and be all fresh painted and gilt, belike. Dear heart! it shall be costly matter! Howbeit, we must keep up with the times, if we would swim and not sink.”
Keeping up with the times is a very costly business. It costs many men their fortunes, many their reputations, and some their souls. Yet men and women are always to be found who will pay the full price, rather than miss doing it.
The struggle was sharp, but short. On the tenth of July, Lady Jane made her queenly entry into the Tower, in anticipation of that coronation which was never to be hers in this world; and on the twentieth, her nine days’ reign was over, and Mary was universally acknowledged Queen of England. The first important prisoner made was the Duke of Northumberland, hurled down just as he touched the glittering prize to the winning of which he had given his life; the second was Bishop Ridley. Events followed each other with startling rapidity. The Lady Elizabeth, with her customary sagacity, kept quiet in the background until the succession of her sister was assured, and then came openly to London to meet the Queen. Peers were sent to the Tower in a long procession. Bonner was restored to the See of London, Gardiner sworn of the Council, Norfolk and Tunstal released from prison. The Queen made her triumphal entry into her metropolis, and the new order of things was secured beyond a doubt.
Business was very brisk, for some weeks afterwards, with the carver and gilder at the bottom of Hosier Lane. Quantities of idols, thrown six years before to the moles and to the bats, were now searched for, mended, cleaned, regilt, and set up in elevated niches. Every house showed at least one, except where those few dwelt who counted not their lives dear unto them for the Master’s sake. Henry Marvell went to the expense of a new Virgin, which he set up on high in his kitchen; but Cicely did not put her hand to the accursed thing, and quietly ignored its existence. Christie, as usual, made himself generally disagreeable, by low reverences to the image in the presence of his mother, and making faces at it in that of his father—a state of things which lasted until he was well beaten by the latter, after which occurrence he reserved his grimaces for other company.
Mistress Flint was entirely indifferent to the question; but since every body else was setting up an idol, she followed in the crowd. If Mr Flint cared, he kept his own counsel. Little Dickon clapped his hands at the pretty colours and bright gilding; and Will innocently asked, “Mother, wherefore had we ne’er Saint Christopher aforetime?”
“Come now, be a good lad, and run to Gossip Hickman for a candle!” was his mother’s convincing answer.
But this is anticipating, and we must retrace our steps to that sixth Sunday for which Agnes was waiting in patient hope. Very anxiously she watched to see whether, when dinner was over, she would be despatched to Aldgate or Bermondsey. But it happened at last as she desired; there was nowhere to send her. Mistress Winter, in her usual considerate style of language, gave Agnes to understand that she had no wish to see her again before dark; and, clad in the old patched serge which was her Sunday dress, the poor drudge crept timidly into Saint Paul’s Cathedral.
From the Lady Chapel, soft and low, came the chant of the Virgin’s Litany. The fashionable people, in rich attire, were promenading up and down the aisle known as “Paul’s Walk.” In the side chapels a few worshippers lingered before the shrines; and round a lectern, in one corner of the nave, were gathered a little knot of men and women, waiting there in the almost forlorn hope that some priest, more zealous than the rest, might come up and read to them. They could not now expect any layman to have the courage to do so. Agnes joined this group.
“I misdoubt there’ll be no reading this day,” said a grey-headed man.
“Ne’er a priest in Paul’s careth to do the same,” responded a forlorn-looking woman. “They be an idle set of wine-bibbers, every man Jack of them.”
“Hush thee, Goody!” whispered a second woman, giving a friendly push to the first. “Keep a civil tongue in thine head, prithee, as whatso thy thoughts be.”
“Thoughts make no noise,” said the old man, smiling grimly.
All at once there was a little stir among the group, as the tall, gaunt figure of the Black Friar was seen climbing the steps of the desk.
“Brethren!” said the voice which Agnes so well remembered, “let us read together the word of God.”
And, beginning just where he had opened the book, he read to them the story of the raising of Lazarus. He gave no word of comment till he reached the end; then he shut the book and spoke to them.
“Brethren!” said the ringing voice, “this day is come Christ unto you, that He may awake you out of sleep. And if ye have not heretofore heard His voice, your sleep, like Lazarus, is that of very death. Now, O ye dead, hear the voice of the Son of God, and live. No man cometh unto the Father but by Him. Ye must come at God neither by mass, nor by penance, nor by confessing, nor by alms-giving, but alonely by Christ. And him that cometh will Christ in nowise cast out. No thief will He turn away; no murderer shall hear that he hath overmuch sinned for pardon; no poor soul shall be denied the unsearchable riches; no weary heart shall seek for rest and find none. Yea, He is become Christ—that is, God and man together—for this very thing, that He might give unto every one of you that will have them, His pardon and His peace. Come ye, every one of you, this day, and put this Christ unto the test.”
Without another word the Black Friar descended from the desk, and passed along the nave to the western door with long, rapid strides. And Agnes went home with her heart full.
Full—with what strange and new thoughts! No masses, no penances, no confessions, no alms-givings, to be the means of reconciliation with God; but only Christ. And was it possible that the Friar meant one other thing which, he had not said—no intercession of saints? If Christ were so ready to receive and bless all who would come—if He were Himself the Mediator for man with God—could He need a mediator in His turn?
Yet if not, thought Agnes with a feeling of sudden terror as the supposition came to her, what became of the intercession of Mary? She who was held up as the Lady of Sorrows—just as Isis, and Cybele, and Hertha had been before her, but of that Agnes knew nothing—she who was pictured by the Church as the fountain of mercy and compassion—the maiden who could sympathise with the griefs of womanhood, the mother who had influence with, yea, authority over, the divine Son—what place did Friar Laurence find for her in his teaching? The mere imagination of a religion without Mary, was like the thought of chaos. Hitherto she had been the motive-power of all piety to Agnes Stone. A sermon without our Lady! It was shocking even to think of it.
Had Agnes been in the regular habit of attendance at Saint Paul’s Cross, she would have heard many such sermons during the reign of Edward the Sixth. But Mistress Winter’s disapprobation, combined with her own indifference, had been enough to keep her away, and the half-discourse of John Laurence at the Cross had been the only sermon she remembered to have heard during the five years of her residence with that delectable dame. Many thoughts, therefore, now familiar to the church-going public, were quite new to her.
If she could but once again come across Friar Laurence!
Chapter Five.
Agnes is asked a Question.
“Whate’er I say, whate’er I syng,
Whate’er I do, that hart shall se,
That I shall serue with hart lovyng
That lovyng hart that lovyth me.”
Few things are more touching in their way than the fragment of paper containing the poem from which the motto to this chapter is a quotation. Among the dusty business manuscripts of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury, in the oldest division, relating to the affairs of the Priory of Christ Church, were found by the Historical Commission two songs, scribbled on scraps of paper. One was a love-song of the common type, such as, allowing for difference of diction, might be had in any second-rate music-shop of the present day. But the other was of a very different and far higher order. It was the cry of the immured bird which has been forced from its nest in the greenwood, and for which life has no other attraction than to sit mournfully at the door of the cage, looking out to the fair fields, and the blue sky in which it shall stretch its wings no more. None but God will ever know the name or the story of that poor heart-weary monk, torn from all that he loved on earth, who thus “pressed his soul on paper,” one hundred years before the dissolution of the monasteries. We can only hope that through the superincumbent wood, hay, stubble, he dug down to the one Foundation and was safe: that through the dead words of the Latin services he heard the Living Voice calling to all the weary and heavy-laden, and that he too came and found rest.
But to turn to our story.
The days rolled slowly on, undistinguishable from one another save by the practical divisions of baking-day, washing-day, brewing-day, and so forth; and, certainly, not distinguished by any increase of comfort in the outward surroundings of Agnes’s lot. She was trying to do her work heartily, as to the Lord; but it did seem to her that the harder she tried, the harder Mistress Winter was to please; the crosser was Joan, the more satirical was Dorothy. The only sunshine of her life was on those precious Sunday afternoons, when always the tall gaunt figure might be seen ascending the desk in the nave of Saint Paul’s, and, after the reading from Scripture, came a few pithy, fervent words, which Agnes treasured up as very gems. But by-and-by, another gleam of sunlight began to creep into her life.
It was again Sunday afternoon, and the reading in Saint Paul’s was over for that day. But it was too soon to go back to the bosom of that uncongenial household which Agnes called home; for Mistress Winter was generally extra cross—and the ordinary exhibition was enough without the extra—if Agnes presented herself before she was expected. The now deserted steps of the Cross were the only place where she could sit; and accordingly she took refuge there. Not many minutes were over, when she recognised the dark figure of Friar Laurence passing through the churchyard with his usual rapid step. All at once a thought seemed to strike him. He paused, turned, and came straight up to the place where Agnes was seated.
“And how is it with thee, my daughter?” he demanded.
“Well, Father; and I thank you,” said she. “Verily, touching outward things, as aforetime; but touching the inward, methinks the good Lord learneth me somewhat.”
“Be thou an apt scholar,” said he.
Agnes grew desperate, and resolved to plunge into the matter. She was afraid lest he should leave her, with one of his usual rapid movements, before she had got to know what she wanted.
“Father!” she said hastily, crimsoning as she spoke, “pray you, give me leave to demand a thing of you.”
“Ask thy will, my daughter.”
“Pray you, tell me of your grace, wherefore in your goodly discourses you make at all no mention of our Lady?”
The Friar sat down on the steps, when he was asked that question.
“What wouldst thou have me for to say of her?”
“Nay, Father!” returned Agnes, humbly. “You be a learned priest, and I but an ignorant maiden; but having alway heard them that did preach sermons to make much of our Lady, methought I would fain wit, an’ I might ask it at you, wherefore you make thus little.”
“My child!” answered the Friar quietly, “who died on the rood for thee?”
“Jesus Christ our Lord,” responded Agnes readily.
“What! not Saint Mary?”
“Certes, nay, Father, as methinks.”
“And who is it that pleadeth with God for thee?”
“You have told me, Father, our Lord Christ is He. Yet the folk say alway, that our Lady doth entreat our Lord for to hear our prayers.”
“Child!” asked the Black Friar, “did Christ die for thee against His will?”
“I would humbly think, not so, Father,” answered Agnes meekly, “sith He needed not to have so done at all without it were His good pleasure.”
“Right!” was the rejoinder. “It was by reason that God the Father loved thee, that He gave Christ to die for thee; it was by reason that Christ loved thee, that He bare for thee the pain and shame of the bitter cross. Tell me, is there in this world any that thou lovest?”
Agnes hesitated. It seemed something new and strange to think that she could love, or could be loved, since the death of her mother. But she thought, and said, that she loved little Will Flint.
“Tell me, then,” pursued her teacher, “if this little lad were in some sore trouble, and that thou couldst quickly ease him thereof, should he need for to run home and fetch his mother to entreat thee?”
“Surely, nay!” responded Agnes. “I would do the same incontinent (immediately), of mine own compassion, and the more if he should ask it. I would never tarry for his mother!”
“My daughter, is thy love so much better than His that died for us? Should Christ tarry till His mother pray Him to be thine help, when of Himself He loveth thee?”
“But, Father—I pray you pardon me if I speak foolishly, in mine unwisdom—how then needeth a mediator at all, if God the Father be so loving unto men?”
“God is a King, whose law thou hast broken. He is all perfect; therefore must His justice be perfect, no less than His mercy. A lawgiver that were all justice should be a scourge unto men; but a lawgiver that were all mercy should be as good as no law. God hath appointed His Son to be thy Surety; and by reason that He is thy Surety, He is become thine Advocate. He hath said in His Word that the Son is the Advocate with the Father; but of an advocate with the Son never a word saith He. Wherefore God saw fit to appoint a Mediator, He knoweth, not I. I am content that having thus decreed, He hath Himself provided the same.”
Agnes looked up, after a moment’s thought, with an expression of fear and trouble on her white face.
“But what then of our Lady?”
“Wherefore should there be aught beyond what God hath told us?” replied Friar Laurence. “She was ‘highly favoured’ and ‘blessed among women,’ in that she was the mother of the Saviour. Must she needs be the Saviour to boot?”
“But we must worship her, trow?”
“Must we so? ‘Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.’ Let us hold by God’s Word, my daughter.”
“Father, I wis so little thereof! nought at all but what I do hear of you,” said Agnes with a sigh.
“Then, my child,” he replied gently, “list thou the better. And here is a word for thee, and for all other in thy place: ‘If any man do desire to do God’s will, he shall know whether doctrine be truth or no.’ Keep that desire ever sharp on the whetstone of prayer. Then, surely as God is in Heaven, thou shalt know.”
The next minute he was gone.
“Agnes, sweet-heart!” demanded Dorothy that evening, in the sugary style which she only used when she was in a particularly tormenting mood, “prithee do me to wit of the name of thy dear friend, Master Black Friar? I beheld him and thee in so sweet converse at the Cross, it caused me to sigh that I had no such a friend as he. I pray thee lovingly of his goodly name?”
The answers which Dorothy usually received from Agnes to questions of this kind were as short as civility permitted.
“Master John Laurence,” said she.
“And how long hast been of his cognisance, sweeting?” demanded Dorothy, with more honey on her tongue than ever.
“I have wist him some six weeks,” said Agnes.
“Six weeks! woe worth the day!” cried Dorothy, putting on an aspect of sentimental sorrow. “And thou never spakest word, when thou wist how dear all we do love thee, and the least we might do for joy of thy finding a new friend were to have the great bell rung at Paul’s! Agnes, my fairest one, this is to entreat us but evil.”
Agnes held her peace. She never felt any doubt of the exceedingly low price to be set upon Dorothy’s affections towards her.
“Is he a priest, darling?” inquired Dorothy in her most coaxing tone.
“Ay,” replied Agnes as curtly as before.
“Good lack, how delightsome!” exclaimed Dorothy, clasping her hands in mock rapture. “Do, of thy sweet gentlehood, bring me of his cognisance. But to think what it were to have a priest thy friend, and alway get absolution without no trouble at all!”
But about the last thing which Agnes had any intention of doing was to introduce Dorothy to John Laurence.
After that interview at the Cross, Agnes often met the Black Friar. Sometimes he passed her with a simple blessing in answer to her reverence; but more frequently he stopped her, and inquired into her spiritual welfare. She had many a difficulty in which to ask his counsel; many a trouble in which it was a relief to seek (and always to find) his sympathy. He was the only friend she had who spoke the language of Canaan. And it was far less as a priest than as a friend that Agnes regarded him. He was as different from old Father Dan, the Cordelier, as Mistress Flint differed from Mistress Winter. Agnes never knew, when preparing for one of those abhorred periodical interviews with the Cordelier, what he might say to her, or rather, what he might not say. She shrank with horror from his inquisitive questioning, and not much less from his petty humiliating penances. Father Dan’s remedy for angry words was to fast for a week on bread and water; for pride, to lick a cross in the dust of the church floor; for envy and covetousness, the administration of a cat-o’-nine-tails on the shoulders. The Black Friar, on the contrary, led Agnes out of herself altogether. He had only one topic, of infinite variety, for it was Jesus Christ. Only once had Agnes asked him whether he would recommend her to administer “the discipline” to herself, as a cure for discontent and murmuring.
“If thy shoulders be discontented, why, by all means,” answered Friar Laurence, with his grave smile; “but if it be thine heart that murmureth, wherefore chastise thy shoulders?”
Agnes never put the question again, and never had recourse to the discipline. Of fasting, poor girl, she had already too much for her bodily profit, without any adventitious use of it. And when she began to pray in reality, the rosary was very soon dropped. When a man’s heart is in earnest, to keep count of his words is not possible.
Meanwhile, in the outer world, the downward progress was very rapid. One after another the Protestant Bishops were committed to prison, and the chief preachers shared their fate. The first mass was sung at Saint Bartholomew’s on the eleventh of August, when the people were ready to tear the officiating priest in pieces; but by the twenty-fourth of the same month it was heard in other churches in London, and the hearers were becoming reconciled to the innovation. The once powerful Duke of Northumberland was beheaded on Tower Hill, notwithstanding his profession of Popery at the last hour; the married priests were deprived; the French Protestant residents were banished; the altar was replaced in Saint Paul’s; the Latin services, processions, palms, ashes, candles, holy bread, holy water, and all the rest of the rubbish swept away at the Reformation, came back one by one. That portion of the populace which had no particular religion was well pleased enough with these changes. The shows and the music were agreeable to them, and the Gospel sermons which they displaced had not been agreeable.
Some tell us in the present day that young people must be attracted to church, and that if music and pageant be not given them, their attendance is not likely to be secured. But what have we gained by thus going down to the Philistines to sharpen our weapons? Are these young people attracted to any thing but the music and the pageant? They are quite clever enough to realise the inconsistency of the man who serves them with bread in the pulpit, while he hands out husks from the chancel.
How many of us mean what we say, when the familiar words fall from our lips, “I believe in the Holy Ghost”? Should we think it necessary, if we really did so, to add all these condiments and spices to the pure Bread of Life? Would it not be easier to discern the real flavour of the heavenly ambrosia, if we might have it served without Italian cookery?
And is there to be no thought taken for those who are won to Christ already? to whom He is in Himself the all-sufficient attraction, and these veils and gewgaws are but annoyances, or at least superfluities? Where is the building up of the saints, the edifying of the Body of Christ? Once was it said to Peter, “Feed My lambs;” but twice “Feed My sheep.” How is it that so many are satisfied with a state of things in which the sheep of Christ are starved and disgusted for the sake of the lambs, or in many cases rather for the sake of those who are not in the fold at all?
In February, 1554, a great commotion was caused in the City and suburbs by the insurrection of Wyatt, which had for its object to arrest the Queen’s projected marriage with Prince Philip of Spain. The Londoners did not show themselves particularly valiant on this occasion, and the doughty Doctor Weston—one of the most active and prominent of the Popish clergy—sang mass to them with a full suit of armour under his vestments. The Duke of Suffolk, whose sad fate it was to be perpetually getting himself into trouble in the present, for fear of calamities which might never occur in the future, ran away in terror lest he should be suspected of complicity with the rebellion; a proceeding which of course roused suspicion instantly, and sealed not only his own fate, but that of his daughter, Lady Jane Grey. The latter was beheaded on the twelfth of February, the former on the twenty-third. For weeks the prisons were full, and the gallows perpetually at work. The Londoners were in so excited and frightened a state—is it any marvel?—that when the phenomena of a mock sun and an inverted rainbow occurred on the fifteenth, they were terrified beyond measure. There was enough to terrify them on the earth, without troubling themselves about the sky. No man’s property, liberty, or life was safe for a moment unless he were a devout servant of holy Church; and even in that case he held them by a frail tenure, for private spite might accuse him of heresy, and then for him there was little hope of mercy. One after another, the few who had hitherto remained staunch either fled from England, fell from the faith, or suffered at the stake.
These being the awkward circumstances of the case, Mistress Winter thought it desirable not only to gild Saint Thomas, but to put on a cloak of piety. The garment was cheap. It was not difficult to attend evensong as well as matins, and that every day instead of once in the week; the drama performed in the Cathedral was very pretty, the music pleasant to hear, the scent of the incense agreeable. It was easy to be extremely cordial to Father Dan, and to express intense subservience to his orders. This kind of religion was no inconvenient bridler of the tongue, nor did it in the least interfere with the pride of the natural heart. Humiliation is one thing, and humility is quite another.
Dorothy began seriously to consider whether she should take the veil. Her disposition was a mixture of the satirical and the sentimental. There would be a good deal of éclat about the proceeding. It was pleasant to be regarded as holier than other people. Nevertheless there were drawbacks; for Dorothy was not fond of hard scrubbing, and was uncommonly fond of venison and barberry pie. And she had a suspicion that rather more scrubbing than venison generally fell to the lot of the holy sisters of Saint Clare. But the idea of the implicit obedience to authority which would in that case be required of her decided Dorothy to remain “in the world.” She thought there was more hope of managing a husband than a lady abbess.
Nearly two years had passed away since Agnes had first heard Friar Laurence preach at Saint Paul’s Cross, and once more Corpus Christi had come round. Since that time she had grown much in the spiritual life, though she had received no outward help beyond those rare Sunday readings, and her occasional interviews with the Friar. Though Corpus Christi was still “uncertainly” kept, it naturally fell in with Mistress Winter’s new policy of veneered piety to be exceedingly respectful to all fasts and festivals. Accordingly she gave a grand banquet to some dozen acquaintances, and sent Agnes about her business. There was likely to be reading on a holy day, and Agnes bent her steps towards the Cathedral; but finding when she reached it that it was a little too early, she sat down on the steps of the Cross to wait. There was no one about; for most of those who cared to keep the feast did not care to hear sermons or Bible-readings; and Agnes was thinking so intently as hardly to be conscious whether she was alone or not.
“Good morrow, friend!” said a voice beside her; and John Laurence sat down a little way from her on the steps.
“Good morrow, Father,” answered Agnes.
“Agnes, I would seek thy counsel.”
Agnes looked up in astonishment. He seek her counsel! Was it not she who had always sought his?
“Good lack, Father!” she exclaimed in her surprise.
John Laurence leaned his head thoughtfully on his hand, and made no further communication for some seconds.
“I know a Black Friar, Agnes,” he said, speaking slowly, as if weighing each word, “who seeth no cause, neither in God’s Word, neither in common reason, wherefore priests should not be wedded men, as thou wist that many, these ten years past, have been. But he is yet loth to break his mind unto the maid, seeing that many perils do now seem to lie in the way of wedded priests, and he cannot tell if it were well done or no, that he should speak unto her. If penalty fell on him, being thus wed, it should not leave her scatheless. Tell me, now, how thinkest thou?—should he do well to break his mind, or no? A maid may judge better than a man how a maid should take it.”
“I would think, Father,” answered the astonished Agnes, “that a maid which did truly love any man should not suffer uncertain sorrow to stand betwixt her and him.”
“Yet how, if it were certain?”
“Nay, nor so neither.”
“Go to! Put it this case were thine own. Shouldst thou be afeared to wed with a priest?”
Agnes did not quite like such a home question. Yet she replied calmly, without any idea of the other question which was coming.
“Methinks, no; not if I truly loved him.”
“And couldst thou truly love—me, Agnes?”
For an instant Agnes gave no answer. She had as little expected to have that question asked her as she had expected to be created a duchess.
“Say sooth, if thou shouldst be feared,” said John Laurence; and the faint suspicion of pain in his tone unloosed her lips at once.
Afraid! Afraid to leave all her dreary past behind her, and to begin a new life, with her cup of gladness full to the very brim? John Laurence was satisfied with his answer. But, for the first time, not one word of reading or comment reached Agnes’s mind in an intelligible form.
“May be, my gracious Lady, your good Ladyship should like your palfrey called!” were the words that greeted Agnes when she made her reappearance in Mistress Winter’s kitchen, having certainly been more forgetful than usual of the flight of time. “Or, may be, it might please your honourableness to turn your goodly eyes upon the clock, and behold whether it be meet time for a decent maid to come home of a feast-day even? By my troth, I would wager thou hadst been to Westminster and hadst danced a galliardo in the Queen’s Grace’s hall, did I not know that none with ’s eyes in ’s head should e’er so much as look on thee. Thou idle doltish gadabout! Dost think I keep thee in board and lodgment and raiment for to go a-gossiping with every idle companion thou mayest meet? Whither hast been, thou dawdlesome patch? Up to no good, I warrant thee!”
“I have been to Paul’s, Mistress, an’ it like you,” was all that Agnes answered.
“Soothly, it liketh me well, sweeting! Alisting some fat pickpurse friar, with his oily words, belike?”
“I have been a-talking with a friend,” said Agnes boldly.
“Marry come up! So my sweet young damosel hath made friends, quotha! Prithee, was it my Lady’s Grace of Suffolk thou wentest forth to see, or my Lady of Norfolk, trow? Did she give thee a ride o’ her velvet pillion, bestudded with gold?”
Agnes thought it would be best to get it over. The storm which must come might as well fall soon as late. She stood up, and looked the terrible Mistress Winter in the face.
“Please it you, Mistress Winter, I am handfast to wedlock; and he that shall be mine husband it is that I have talked withal this even.”
And having so spoken, Agnes waited quietly for the tempest.
Chapter Six.
The Shadow before.
“Oh for the faith to grasp Heaven’s bright For Ever,
Amid the shadows of earth’s Little While!”
Jane Crewdson.
Sheer amazement kept Mistress Winter silent for one moment after Agnes had made her startling revelation. That her bondslave should have dared to dream of freedom was almost too preposterous for belief. And she was powerless to stop this most insubordinate proceeding; for, never anticipating such a calamity, and not fond of spending money, except on herself and her daughters, she had not, as she might have done, bound Agnes her apprentice. But after that minute of astonished silence, a thunderstorm such as even Agnes had never before experienced, burst upon her devoted head. If Mistress Winter might be believed, no such instance of rebellion, perversity, ingratitude, and all imaginable wickedness, had ever before occurred since Adam and Eve quitted Paradise. Agnes was asked to what she expected to come in this life, and where she expected to go after it. When Mistress Winter became weary of scolding, which was not soon, Joan took up the tale, and when she was tired Dorothy succeeded, and as all were gifted with considerable powers of speech, the ball was kept going until bedtime. Then Agnes was allowed to creep to her coarse rug and bundle of straw, feeling herself in peace at last.
Thenceforward there was not much peace left, at least in the day-time. Having been interrogated as to the name and calling of her suitor, Agnes was at once dubbed Madam Dominic, my Lady’s Grace of Blackfriars, and various similar titles. Dorothy, clasping her hands in mock rapture, falsely averred that she had foreseen this delightful ending to the story, when she caught sight of Agnes and Friar Laurence talking at the Cross; and proceeded to give an ironical description of the Friar’s personal charms, sufficiently spiced to be very amusing to her mother and sister, and just sufficiently seasoned with truth to be exceedingly galling to Agnes. Henceforth she took every opportunity to play ill-natured practical jokes on the latter. It was not likely that Agnes would particularly enjoy having shreds of dirty flannel and linen flung into her lap, with a tittering remark that they would enrich her trousseau; nor feeling, when she sat at needlework, a rotten egg gently broken over her head, with the bland intimation that it was to dress her hair for the wedding; nor the presentation, in solemn form, of torn and faded ribbons, accompanied by the information that they would become her sweetly on her bridal. Of all approach to wedding attire poor Agnes was devoid. She had but two gowns in the world—the washed-out linen bed-gown and stuff petticoat in which her work was generally done, and the well-patched serge which replaced it upon holy days. But Agnes bore all these outrages with a patience born of long practice, and nourished by glad hope. It was now May, and it had been agreed with John Laurence that the twenty-ninth of the following March was to set her free.
They would gladly have made arrangements for an earlier date, had it been possible. But John Laurence was not much richer than Agnes herself, and they had to wait till he thought that he could reasonably afford to marry. Beside this, it was a most perilous time for a priest to think of wedlock. Things might change. Hope told that “flattering tale” which she is so fond of recapitulating to young people—often most unjustifiably. Who could tell what might happen, if they waited?
Meanwhile, what was happening was not particularly cheering, at least to the apprehension of the Gospellers. Wyatt’s insurrection had been put down, and its leader beheaded; and its fruitlessness was shown by the setting out of the Queen’s envoys to escort Philip to England, while Wyatt yet lay in prison waiting for his trial. The Princess Elizabeth, sent to the Tower in March, on charge of complicity in Wyatt’s evil deeds—who will ever know whether it was true?—had been released (at Philip’s request, it was said) a few days before Corpus Christi. Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer lay imprisoned at Oxford, and under sentence of death. Nearly every day somebody was exhibited in the pillory—women as well as men—the most frequent charge being, as it appears in the diary of that comical speller, Mr Henry Machyn—“spekyng yll of good Qwen Mare.” The difficulty which presents itself to the present generation is, how else her subjects could well speak of her proceedings. However, they could have held their peace. Probably the discreet portion of the community did so.
It may seem a little strange, on the surface, when one considers how it was that the reign of Mary was felt so galling, that the accession of Elizabeth was welcomed with such a fever of delight and triumph, such a sense of relief and freedom, as was undoubtedly the case—and yet that men bore the former and made no sign, waited for the latter with indescribable longing, but without any attempt to bring it about. Perhaps we must attribute this partly to that law-abiding instinct inherent in the ordinary Englishman: yet I think still more to the fact that as a rule, at all times, in all respects, the majority of the nation are indifferent. There were men who died at the stake in defence of the free Gospel. There were men who kindled those fires, and stamped out the truth, so far as in them lay. But these, even when put together, were still a minority. The majority were the watchers who stood round the stake, and who cared nothing for the cause on either side—who went to see a martyrdom as a Spaniard goes to see a bull-fight, with neither sympathy nor enmity towards the martyr. Of course, these would be, as to religious profession, what they found it to their own interest that they should be. The most popular and crowded of all the Seven Churches is the Church of Laodicea.
“Because thou art lukewarm... I will spue thee out of My mouth.”
It was not without some difficulty that Agnes contrived to enjoy an occasional, and always short, interview with her betrothed. Such interviews were generally followed by forced audiences of Dorothy, who professed an entirely hypocritical interest in the progress of the love-match, and did her best to make Agnes recount what her lover had said to her. Agnes, however, was wise enough to keep out of the trap laid for her, and Dorothy took little by her motion.
Sometimes the lovers met for a few minutes before or after the reading in the Cathedral; sometimes there could be a few words as Agnes carried her pails to and from the Horsepool; once or twice, when Mistress Winter had barred the door on her for misdemeanour, they walked to some quiet nook in the fields near Clerkenwell, refreshing themselves with converse on the one grand subject nearest to both hearts—nearer even than each other. But the readings in the Cathedral were becoming much fewer than of old. It was a perilous thing to do now, and John Laurence was a marked man. Not that he feared danger: his motto was that of the old French knight—“Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra!” But his brother clergy were afraid lest it should be known that such compromising proceedings as regular Scripture lessons were permitted at Saint Paul’s. Some from dislike of the Bible-reading, a few from honest kindly feeling towards the reader, managed to take care that the lectern was otherwise occupied, during the hour which alone John Laurence could usually spare from other duties.
At last King Philip landed in England, and his meeting and marriage with the Queen took place at Winchester. The City and suburbs blazed with bonfires, and rang with bells; the Te Deum was chanted in every church; the utmost delight had to be felt, or at any rate professed, by all who did not wish to be reported as disaffected persons. On the twelfth of August, the royal bride and bridegroom made their state entry into London. A heretic had been burnt at Uxbridge four days previous.
Every house in Cow Lane, imitating every other street in London, poured forth its members to see the procession. The good folks locked their doors, and left their houses to take care of themselves. Agnes, who liked a pretty sight as well as other people, had taken her stand with the crowd, and was looking out with interest as the first of the advancing horsemen who opened the procession became visible, when suddenly she felt a hand upon her own. She looked up into the welcome face of John Laurence.
“Art come to see the sight, John?” she asked with a smile.
“I am come to see two sights,” said he, returning it,—but his smiles were always grave. “To wit, the King’s and Queen’s Graces of the one hand, and Agnes Stone of the other. Hast a mind for a walk toward the Clerks’ Well, when all be gone by?”
“With a very good will,” she answered.
But the pageant was coming past now, and they exchanged the use of their tongues for that of their eyes. It was entirely equestrian, and came over London Bridge, from Suffolk Place, where the King and Queen had passed the night. Our friends were not prepossessed by the royal bridegroom, whose low stature, want of beauty, and gloomy expression, struck them in the same light that they did most Englishmen, as denoting neither grace nor graciousness. Only two persons are recorded ever to have loved Philip—Queen Mary herself, and her successor, the fair and sagacious Elizabeth of France.
Just opposite the place where Agnes and the Friar stood was an allegorical group, of which one painted figure, supposed to be Henry the Eighth, was holding out to the Queen an open Bible, inscribed with the words Verbum Dei. But before night a warning had been conveyed to the authorities that the Queen was offended with this representation of her father, and the Bible was painted out so hastily that the hand of the figure was partly obliterated with it.
When the pageant had gone by, and the crowd had sufficiently dispersed, John Laurence and Agnes set out for their walk to Clerkenwell. They found a shady field, in a corner of which they sat down, and the Friar drew from his pocket a Latin Psalter,—the only form of the Bible with which it was then safe to be caught. From this he read to Agnes the hundred and seventh Psalm, translating it as he went on into the only tongue she knew.
“And He led them forth by the right way, that they might go to the City of Habitation.”
He paused at that seventh verse, and half closing the book, sat looking thoughtfully into the blue heaven.
Very vaguely did Agnes enter into his deeper thoughts. Her ideas concerning public events, and possible future dangers, were of a very misty description. She kept silent a moment. Then, when he did not speak, she said—
“Well, John?”
“By the right way!” he said dreamily, rather as if speaking to himself than to her. “And He leads them, too, inportum voluntatis eorum—to the haven of their desire.”
“That is, Heaven?” said Agnes questioningly. Her admiration for his knowledge and wisdom was high.
“That is Heaven,” he replied in the same tone as before.
“John, what thinkest Heaven shall be like?”
“Like God!” said the Black Friar slowly. “Therefore, glorious—wonderful—perfect in every part—holy—satisfying.”
“And right fair and beauteous, doubtless,” she added, by way of completing the picture.
“That which is perfect must be fair,” said John Laurence. “He saith to His Church, ‘Thou art all fair, My love, and a stain is not in thee.’ That is, to thee, and me, Agnes.”
“To me?” she repeated, in an awe-struck voice. “Nay, how so, trow? I am all o’er a stain with my sins.”
The answer was in inspired words. “‘For perfect wert thou, in My beauty which I put upon thee, saith the Lord God.’”
Agnes sat still, trying to take in the idea.
“Hear yet again another His saying to the Church: ‘Thou hast wounded Mine heart, My sister-spouse; thou hast wounded Mine heart in one of thine eyes, and in one chain of thy neck.’ Now what is the eye?—is it not a member of the body? Doth not this learn us that every one of Christ’s members hath his proper and peculiar love of Him, that cannot belong to any other? Yea, more; for the chain of the neck is not a member, but only the ornament of a member. Wherefore one grace—for the ornaments of the soul be his graces—one grace of one Christian soul is enough to delight Christ’s heart.”
Both were silent for a while, Agnes learning her new lesson.
“Mine heart!” said John Laurence suddenly, “the right way at times looks like the wrong.”
“What meanest thou, John?” said Agnes, looking into his face, and startled by its expression of pain.
“Dear heart, we know not what lieth afore us. We be so blind, Agnes! But He knows. It is enough, if we are ready to follow Him. Canst thou dare follow, as well through the flood and the fire as through the flowery mead?”
“I cannot tell,” she said tremulously. “I would try.”
“There be two staves to lean on in our weariness,” he said. “The one is for earth: ‘Fear not, because I am with thee.’ And the other is of Heaven, but gildeth earth with hope: ‘Where I am, there shall My servant be.’ There must be glory and sweetness, where is Jesus Christ.”
Long years afterwards, Agnes recalled those words.