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The King's Achievement

by Robert Hugh Benson · English · Gutenberg #16375 · 814,247 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The King's Achievement

Author: Robert Hugh Benson


        
Release date: July 27, 2005 [eBook #16375]
                Most recently updated: March 20, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KING'S ACHIEVEMENT ***




THE KING’S ACHIEVEMENT

By Robert Hugh Benson

Author of “By What Authority?” “The Light Invisible,”
“A Book of the Love of Jesus,” etc.

_Non minus principi turpia sunt multa supplicia, quam medico multa
funera._

(Sen. de clem. 1, 24, 1.)




_I must express my gratitude once more to the Rev. Dom Bede Camm,
O.S.B., as well as to the Very Rev. Mgr. Barnes, who have done me great
service in revising proofs and making suggestions; to the Rev. E.
Conybeare, who very kindly provided the coins for the cover-design of
the book; to my mother and sister, to Eustace Virgo, Esq., to Dr.
Ross-Todd, and to others, who have been extremely kind in various ways
during the writing of this book in the summer and autumn of 1904._

_I must also express my great indebtedness to the Right Rev. Abbot
Gasquet, O.S.B., both on account of his invaluable books, which I have
used freely, and for his personal kindness in answering my questions._

ROBERT HUGH BENSON

_The Catholic Rectory,
Cambridge,
July 14, 1905._




CONTENTS


BOOK I.
THE KING’S WILL.

CHAPTER

   I.  A DECISION
  II.  A FORETASTE OF PEACE
 III.  THE ARRIVAL AT LEWES
  IV.  A COMMISSION
   V.  MASTER MORE
  VI.  RALPH’S INTERCESSION
 VII.  A MERRY PRISONER
VIII.  A HIGHER STEP
  IX.  LIFE AT LEWES
   X.  THE ARENA
  XI.  A CLOSING-IN
 XII.  A RECOVERY
XIII.  PRISONER AND PRINCE
 XIV.  THE SACRED PURPLE
  XV.  THE KING’S FRIEND


BOOK II.
THE KING’S TRIUMPH.

PART I.--THE SMALLER HOUSES.

   I.  AN ACT OF FAITH
  II.  THE BEGINNING OF THE VISITATION
 III.  A HOUSE OF LADIES
  IV.  AN UNEXPECTED MEETING
   V.  FATHER AND SON
  VI.  A NUN’S DEFIANCE
 VII. ST. PANCRAS PRIORY
VIII. RALPH’S RETURN
  IX. RALPH’S WELCOME

PART II--THE FALL OF LEWES.

   I. INTERNAL DISSENSION
  II. SACERDOS IN AETERNUM
 III. THE NORTHERN RISING
  IV. THE DESTRUCTION OF THE SEAL
   V. THE SINKING SHIP
  VI. THE LAST STAND
 VII. AXES AND HAMMERS


BOOK III.

THE KING’S GRATITUDE.

   I. A SCHEME
  II. A DUEL
 III. A PEACE-MAKER
  IV. THE ELDER SON
   V. THE MUMMERS
  VI. A CATASTROPHE
 VII. A QUESTION OF LOYALTY
VIII. TO CHARING
  IX. A RELIEF-PARTY
   X. PLACENTIA
  XI. THE KING’S HIGHNESS
 XII. THE TIDINGS AT THE TOWER
XIII. THE RELEASE




BENEFICO--IGNOTO
HVNC--LIBRVM
D.




THE KING’S ACHIEVEMENT

CHAPTER I

A DECISION


Overfield Court lay basking in warm June sunshine. The western side of
the great house with its new timber and plaster faced the evening sun
across the square lawns and high terrace; and the woods a couple of
hundred yards away cast long shadows over the gardens that lay beyond
the moat. The lawns, in their broad plateaux on the eastern side
descended by steps, in cool shadow to the lake that formed a
quarter-circle below the south-eastern angle of the house; and the
mirrored trees and reeds on the other side were broken, circle after
circle, by the great trout that were rising for their evening meal. The
tall front of the house on the north, formed by the hall in the centre
with the kitchen at its eastern end and the master’s chamber on the
western, was faced by a square-towered gatehouse through which the
straight drive leading into the main road approached the house under a
lime-avenue; and on the south side the ground fell away again rapidly
below the chapel and the morning-room, in copse and garden and wild
meadow bright with buttercups and ox-eye daisies, down to the lake again
and the moat that ran out of it round the entire domain.

The cobbled courtyard in the centre of the house, where the tall leaded
pump stood, was full of movement. Half a dozen trunks lay there that
had just been carried in from the luggage-horses that were now being led
away with patient hanging heads towards the stables that stood outside
the gatehouse on the right, and three or four dusty men in livery were
talking to the house-servants who had come out of their quarters on the
left. From the kitchen corner came a clamour of tongues and dishes, and
smoke was rising steadily from the huge outside chimney that rose beyond
the roofs.

Presently there came clear and distinct from the direction of the
village the throb of hoofs on the hard road; and the men shouldered the
trunks, and disappeared, staggering, under the low archway on the right,
beside which the lamp extinguisher hung, grimy with smoke and grease.
The yard dog came out at the sound of the hoofs, dragging his chain
after him, from his kennel beneath the little cloister outside the
chapel, barked solemnly once or twice, and having done his duty lay down
on the cool stones, head on paws, watching with bright eyes the door
that led from the hall into the Court. A moment later the little door
from the masters chamber opened; and Sir James Torridon came out and,
giving a glance at the disappearing servants, said a word or two to the
others, and turned again through the hall to meet his sons.

The coach was coming up the drive round toward the gatehouse, as he came
out on the wide paved terrace; and he stood watching the glitter of
brasswork through the dust, the four plumed cantering horses in front,
and the bobbing heads of the men that rode behind; and there was a grave
pleased expectancy on his bearded face and in his bright grey eyes as he
looked. His two sons had met at Begham, and were coming home, Ralph from
town sites a six months’ absence, and Christopher from Canterbury,
where he had been spending a week or two in company with Mr. Carleton,
the chaplain of the Court. He was the more pleased as the house had been
rather lonely in their absence, since the two daughters were both from
home, Mary with her husband, Sir Nicholas Maxwell, over at Great Keynes,
and Margaret at her convent education at Rusper: and he himself had had
for company his wife alone.

She came out presently as the carriage rolled through the archway, a
tall dignified figure of a woman, finely dressed in purple and black,
and stood by him, silently, a yard or two away, watching the carriage
out of steady black eyes. A moment later the carriage drew up at the
steps, and a couple of servants ran down to open the door.

Ralph stepped out first, a tall man like both his parents, with a face
and slow gait extraordinarily like his mother’s, and dressed in the same
kind of rich splendour, with a short silver-clasped travelling cloak,
crimson hose, and plumed felt cap; and his face with its pointed black
beard had something of the same steady impassivity in it; he was
flicking the dust from his shoulder as he came up the steps on to the
terrace.

Christopher followed him, not quite so tall as the other, and a good ten
years younger, with the grey eyes of his father, and a little brown
beard beginning to sprout on his cheeks and chin.

Ralph turned at the top of the steps

“The bag,” he said shortly; and then turned again to kiss his parents’
hands; as Christopher went back to the carriage, from which the priest
was just stepping out. Sir James asked his son about the journey.

“Oh, yes,” he said; and then added, “Christopher was late at Begham.”

“And you are well, my son?” asked his mother, as they turned to walk up
to the house.

“Oh, yes!” he said again.

Sir James waited for Christopher and Mr. Carleton, and the three
followed the others a few yards behind.

“You saw her?” said his father.

Christopher nodded.

“Yes,” he said, “I must speak to you, sir, before I tell the others.”

“Come to me when you are dressed, then. Supper will be in an hour from
now;” and he looked at his son with a kind of sharp expectancy.

The courtyard was empty as they passed through, but half a dozen
servants stood crowded in the little flagged passage that led from it
into the kitchen, and watched Ralph and his mother with an awed interest
as they came out from the hall. Mr. Ralph had come down from the heart
of life, as they knew; had been present at the crowning of Anne Boleyn a
week before, had mixed with great folks; and what secrets of State might
there not be in that little strapped bag that his brother carried behind
him?

When the two first had disappeared, the servants broke into talk, and
went back to the kitchen.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lady Torridon, with her elder son and the chaplain, had to wait a few
minutes on the dais in the hall an hour later, before the door under the
musicians’ gallery opened, and the other two came in from the master’s
chamber. Sir James looked a little anxious as he came across the clean
strewed rushes, past the table at the lower end where the household sat,
but Christopher’s face was bright with excitement. After a word or two
of apology they moved to their places. Mr. Carleton said grace, and as
they sat down the door behind from the kitchen opened, and the servants
came through with the pewter dishes.

Ralph was very silent at first; his mother sat by him almost as silent
as himself; the servants sprang about noiseless and eager to wait on
him; and Sir James and the chaplain did most of the conversation,
pleasant harmless talk about the estate and the tenants; but as supper
went on, and the weariness of the hot journey faded, and the talk from
the lower tables grew louder, Ralph began to talk a little more freely.

“Yes,” he said, “the crowning went well enough. The people were quiet
enough. She looked very pretty in her robes; she was in purple velvet,
and her gentlemen in scarlet. We shall have news of her soon.”

Sir James looked up sharply at his son. They were all listening
intently; and even a servant behind Ralph’s chair paused with a silver
jug.

“Yes,” said Ralph again with a tranquil air, setting down his Venetian
glass; “God has blessed the union already.”

“And the King?” asked his father, from his black velvet chair in the
centre.

There fell a deeper silence yet as that name was mentioned. Henry
dominated the imagination of his subjects to an extraordinary degree, no
less in his heavy middle-age than in the magnificent strength and
capacity of his youth.

But Ralph answered carelessly enough. He had seen the King too often.

“The King looked pleased enough; he was in his throne. He is stouter
than when I saw him last. My Lord of Canterbury did the crowning; Te
Deum was sung after, and then solemn mass. There was a dozen abbots, I
should think, and my Lords of York and London and Winchester with two or
three more. My Lord of Suffolk bore the crown.”

“And the procession?” asked his father again.

“That, too, was well enough. There came four chariots after the Queen,
full of ancient old ladies, at which some of the folks laughed. And then
the rest of them.”

They talked a few minutes about the coronation, Sir James asking most of
the questions and Ralph answering shortly; and presently Christopher
broke in--

“And the Lady Katharine--” he began.

“Hush, my son,” said his father, glancing at Ralph, who sat perfectly
still a moment before answering.

“Chris is always eager about the wrong thing,” he said evenly; “he is
late at Begham, and then asks me about the Princess Dowager. She is
still alive, if you mean that.”

Lady Torridon looked from one to the other.

“And Master Cromwell?” she asked.

“Master Cromwell is well enough. He asked me to give you both his
respects. I left him at Hackney.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The tall southern windows of the hall, above the pargetted plaster, had
faded through glowing ruby and blue to dusk before they rose from the
table and went down and through the passage into the little parlour next
the master’s chamber, where they usually took their dessert. This part
of the house had been lately re-built, but the old woodwork had been
re-used, and the pale oak panels, each crowned by an elaborate foliated
head, gave back the pleasant flicker of the fire that burned between the
polished sheets of Flemish tiles on either side of the hearth. A great
globe stood in the corner furthest from the door, with a map of England
hanging above it. A piece of tapestry hung over the mantelpiece,
representing Diana bending over Endymion, and two tall candles in brass
stands burned beneath. The floor was covered with rushes.

Mr. Carleton, who had come with them as far as the door, according to
custom, was on the point of saying-good-night, when Sir James called him
back.

“Come in, father,” he said, “we want you to-night. Chris has something
to tell us.”

The priest came in and sat down with the others, his face in shadow, at
the corner of the hearth.

Sir James looked across at his younger son and nodded; and Chris, his
chin on his hand, and sitting very upright on the long-backed settle
beside the chaplain, began rather nervously and abruptly.

“I--I have told Ralph,” he said, “on the way here and you, sir; but I
will tell you again. You know I was questioning whether I had a vocation
to the religious life; and I went, with that in my mind, to see the Holy
Maid. We saw her, Mr. Carleton and I; and--and I have made up my mind I
must go.”

He stopped, hesitating a little, Ralph and his mother sat perfectly
still, without a word or sign of either sympathy or disapproval. His
father leaned forward a little, and smiled encouragingly.

“Go on, my son.”

Chris drew a breath and leaned back more easily.

“Well, we went to St. Sepulchre’s; and she could not see us for a day or
two. There were several others staying with us at the monastery; there
was a Carthusian from Sheen--I forget his name.”

“Henry Man,” put in the chaplain.

“--And some others,” went on Chris, “all waiting to see her. Dr. Bocking
promised to tell us when we could see her; and he came to us one morning
after mass, and told us that she was in ecstasy, and that we were to
come at once. So we all went to the nuns’ chapel, and there she was on
her knees, with her arms across her breast.”

He stopped again. Ralph cleared his throat, crossed his legs, and drank
a little wine.

“Yes?” said the knight questioningly.

“Well--she said a great deal,” went on Chris hurriedly.

“About the King?” put in his mother who was looking at the fire.

“A little about the King,” said Chris, “and about holy things as well.
She spoke about heaven; it was wonderful to hear her; with her eyes
burning, and such a voice; and then she spoke low and deep and told us
about hell, and the devil and his torments; and I could hardly bear to
listen; and she told us about shrift, and what it did for the soul; and
the blessed sacrament. The Carthusian put a question or two to her, and
she answered them: and all the while she was speaking her voice seemed
to come from her body, and not from her mouth; and it was terrible to
see her when she spoke of hell; her tongue lay out on her cheek, and her
eyes grew little and afraid.”

“Her tongue in her cheek, did you say?” asked Ralph politely, without
moving.

Chris flushed, and sat back silent. His father glanced quickly from one
to the other.

“Tell us more, Chris,” he said. “What did she say to you?”

The young man leaned forward again.

“I wish, Ralph--” he began.

“I was asking--” began the other.

“There, there,” said Sir James. “Go on, Chris.”

“Well, after a while Dr. Bocking brought me forward; and told her to
look at me; and her eyes seemed to see something beyond me; and I was
afraid. But he told me to ask her, and I did. She said nothing for a
while; and then she began to speak of a great church, as if she saw it;
and she saw there was a tower in the middle, and chapels on either side,
and tombs beside the high altar; and an image, and then she stopped, and
cried out aloud ‘Saint Pancras pray for us’--and then I knew.”

Chris was trembling violently with excitement as he turned to the priest
for corroboration. Mr. Carleton nodded once or twice without speaking.

“Then I knew,” went on Chris. “You know it was what I had in my mind;
and I had not spoken a word of Lewes, or of my thought of going there.”

“Had you told any?” asked his father.

“Only Dr. Bocking. Then I asked her, was I to go there; but she said
nothing for a while; and her eyes wandered about; and she began to speak
of black monks going this way and that; and she spoke of a prior, and of
his ring; it was of gold, she said, with figures engraved on it. You
know the ring the Prior wears?” he added, looking eagerly at his father.

Sir James nodded.

“I know it,” he said. “Well?”

“Well, I asked her again, was I to go there; and then she looked at me
up and down; I was in my travelling suit; but she said she saw my cowl
and its hanging sleeves, and an antiphoner in my hands; and then her
face grew dreadful and afraid again, and she cried out and fell forward;
and Dr. Bocking led us out from the chapel.”

There was a long silence as Chris ended and leaned back again, taking
up a bunch of raisins. Ralph sighed once as if wearied out, and his
mother put her hand on his sleeve. Then at last Sir James spoke.

“You have heard the story,” he said, and then paused; but there was no
answer. At last the chaplain spoke from his place.

“It is all as Chris said,” he began, “I was there and heard it. If the
woman is not from God, she is one of Satan’s own; and it is hard to
think that Satan would tell us of the sacraments and bid us use them
greedily, and if she is from God--” he stopped again.

The knight nodded at him.

“And you, sweetheart?” he said to his wife.

She turned to him slowly.

“You know what I think,” she said. “If Chris believes it, he must go, I
suppose.”

“And you, Ralph?”

Ralph raised himself in his chair.

“Do you wish me to say what I think?” he asked deliberately, “or what
Chris wishes me to say? I will do either.”

Chris made a quick movement of his head; but his father answered for
him.

“We wish you to say what you think,” he said quietly.

“Well, then,” said Ralph, “it is this. I cannot agree with the father. I
think the woman is neither of God nor Satan; but that she speaks of her
own heart, and of Dr. Bocking’s. I believe they are a couple of
knaves--clever knaves, I will grant, though perhaps the woman is
something of a fool too; for she deceives persons as wise even as Mr.
Carleton here by speaking of shrift and the like; and so she does the
priests’ will, and hopes to get gain for them and herself. I am not
alone in thinking this--there are many in town who think with me, and
holy persons too.”

“Is Master Cromwell one of them?” put in Chris bitterly.

Ralph raised his eyebrows a little.

“There is no use in sneering,” he said, “but Master Cromwell is one of
them. I suppose I ought not to speak of this; but I know you will not
speak of it again; and I can tell you of my own knowledge that the Holy
Maid will not be at St. Sepulchre’s much longer.”

His father leaned forward.

“Do you mean--” he began.

“I mean that His Grace is weary of her prophesyings. It was all very
well till she began to meddle with matters of State; but His Grace will
have none of that. I can tell you no more. On the other hand if Chris
thinks he must be a monk, well and good; I do not think so myself; but
that is not my affair; but I hope he will not be a monk only because a
knavish woman has put out her tongue at him, and repeated what a knavish
priest has put into her mouth. But I suppose he had made up his mind
before he asked me.”

“He has made up his mind,” said his father, “and will hold to it unless
reason is shown to the contrary; and for myself I think he is right.”

“Very well, then,” said Ralph; and leaned back once more.

The minutes passed away in silence for a while; and then Ralph asked a
question or two about his sisters.

“Mary is coming over to hunt to-morrow with her husband,” said Sir
James. “I have told Forrest to be here by nine o’clock. Shall you come
with us?”

Ralph yawned, and sipped his Bordeaux.

“I do not know,” he said, “I suppose so.”

“And Margaret is at Rusper still,” went on the other. “She will not be
here until August.”

“She, too, is thinking of Religion,” put in Lady Torridon impassively.

Ralph looked up lazily.

“Indeed,” he said, “then Mary and I will be the only worldlings.”

“She is very happy with the nuns,” said his father, smiling, “and a
worldling can be no more than that; and perhaps not always as much.”

Ralph smiled with one corner of his mouth.

“You are quite right, sir,” he said.

The bell for evening prayers sounded out presently from the turret in
the chapel-corner, and the chaplain rose and went out.

“Will you forgive me, sir,” said Ralph, “if I do not come this evening?
I am worn out with travelling. The stay at Begham was very troublesome.”

“Good-night, then, my son. I will send Morris to you immediately.”

“Oh, after prayers,” said Ralph. “I need not deprive God of his prayers
too.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Lady Torridon had gone out silently after the chaplain, and Sir James
and Chris walked across the Court together. Overhead the summer night
sky was clear and luminous with stars, and the air still and fragrant.
There were a few lights here and there round the Court, and the tall
chapel windows shone dimly above the little cloister. A link flared
steadily on its iron bracket by the door into the hall, and threw waves
of flickering ruddy light across the cobble-stones, and the shadow of
the tall pump wavered on the further side.

Sir James put his hand tenderly on Chris’ shoulder.

“You must not be angry at Ralph, my son,” he said. “Remember he does not
understand.”

“He should not speak like that,” said Chris fiercely. “How dare he do
so?”

“Of course he should not; but he does not know that. He thinks he is
advising you well. You must let him alone, Chris. You must remember he
is almost mad with business. Master Cromwell works him hard.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The chapel was but dimly lighted as Chris made his way up to the high
gallery at the west where he usually knelt. The altar glimmered in the
dusk at the further end, and only a couple of candles burned on the
priest’s kneeling stool on the south side. The rest was dark, for the
house hold knew compline by heart; and even before Chris reached his
seat he heard the blessing asked for a quiet night and a perfect end. It
was very soothing to him as he leaned over the oak rail and looked down
on the dim figures of his parents in their seat at the front, and the
heads of the servants below, and listened to the quiet pulsation of
those waves of prayer going to and fro in the dusk, beating, as a summer
tide at the foot of a cliff against those white steps that rose up to
the altar where a single spark winked against the leaded window beneath
the silk-shrouded pyx. He had come home full of excitement and joy at
his first sight of an ecstatic, and at the message that she had seemed
to have for him, and across these heightened perceptions had jarred the
impatience of his brother in the inn at Begham and in the carriage on
their way home, and above all his sharp criticism and aloofness in the
parlour just now. But he became quieter as he knelt now; the bitterness
seemed to sink beneath him and to leave him alone in a world of
peaceful glory--the world of mystic life to which his face was now set,
illuminated by the words of the nun. He had seen one who could see
further than he himself; he had looked upon eyes that were fixed on
mysteries and realms in which he indeed passionately believed, but which
were apt to be faint and formless sometimes to the weary eyes of faith
alone; and as a proof that these were more than fancies she had told him
too of what he could verify--of the priory at Lewes which she had never
visited, and even the details of the ring on the Prior’s finger which he
alone of the two had seen. And then lastly she had encouraged him in his
desires, had seen him with those same wide eyes in the habit that he
longed to wear, going about the psalmody--the great _Opus Dei_--to which
he longed to consecrate his life. If such were not a message from God to
him for what further revelation could he hope?

And as for Ralph’s news and interests, of what value were they? Of what
importance was it to ask who sat on the Consort’s throne, or whether she
wore purple velvet or red? These were little matters compared with those
high affairs of the soul and the Eternal God, of which he was already
beginning to catch glimpses, and even the whispers that ran about the
country places and of which Ralph no doubt could tell him much if he
chose, of the danger that threatened the religious houses, and of
Henry’s intentions towards them--even these were but impotent cries of
the people raging round the throne of the Anointed.

So he knelt here now, pacified and content again, and thought with
something of pity of his brother dozing now no doubt before the parlour
fire, cramped by his poor ideals and dismally happy in his limitations.

His father, too, was content down below in the chapel. He himself had
at one time before his marriage looked towards the religious life; and
now that it had turned out otherwise had desired nothing more than that
he should be represented in that inner world of God’s favourites by at
least one of his children. His daughter Margaret had written a week
earlier to say that her mind was turning that way, and now Christopher’s
decision had filled up the cup of his desires. To have a priest for a
son, and above all one who was a monk as well was more than he had dared
to hope, though not to pray for; if he could not be one himself, at
least he had begotten one--one who would represent him before God, bring
a blessing on the house, and pray and offer sacrifice for his soul until
his time should be run out and he see God face to face. And Ralph would
represent him before men and carry on the line, and hand on the house to
a third generation--Ralph, at whom he had felt so sorely puzzled of
late, for he seemed full of objects and ambitions for which the father
had very little sympathy, and to have lost almost entirely that delicate
relation with home that was at once so indefinable and so real. But he
comforted himself by the thought that his elder son was not wholly
wasting time as so many of the country squires were doing round about,
absorbed in work that a brainless yeoman could do with better success.
Ralph at least was occupied with grave matters, in Cromwell’s service
and the King’s, and entrusted with high secrets the issue of which both
temporal and eternal it was hard to predict. And, no doubt, the knight
thought, in time he would come back and pick up the strands he had
dropped; for when a man had wife and children of his own to care for,
other businesses must seem secondary; and questions that could be
ignored before must be faced then.

But he thought with a little anxiety of his wife, and wondered whether
his elder son had not after all inherited that kind of dry rot of the
soul, in which the sap and vigour disappear little by little, leaving
the shape indeed intact but not the powers. When he had married her,
thirty-five years before, she had seemed to him an incarnate mystery of
whose key he was taking possession--her silence had seemed pregnant with
knowledge, and her words precious pieces from an immeasurable treasury;
and then little by little he had found that the wide treasury was empty,
clean indeed and capacious, but no more, and above all with no promise
of any riches as yet unperceived. Those great black eyes, that high
forehead, those stately movements, meant nothing; it was a splendid
figure with no soul within. She did her duty admirably, she said her
prayers, she entertained her guests with the proper conversation, she
could be trusted to behave well in any circumstances that called for
tact or strength; and that was all. But Ralph would not be like that; he
was intensely devoted to his work, and from all accounts able in its
performance; and more than that, with all his impassivity he was capable
of passion; for his employer Sir Thomas Cromwell was to Ralph’s eyes,
his father had begun to see, something almost more than human. A word
against that master of his would set his eyes blazing and his voice
trembling; and this showed that at least the soul was not more than
sleeping, or its powers more than misdirected.

And meanwhile there was Chris; and at the thought the father lifted his
eyes to the gallery, and saw the faint outline of his son’s brown head
against the whitewash.




CHAPTER II

A FORETASTE OF PEACE


It was not until the party was riding home the next day that Sir
Nicholas Maxwell and his wife were informed of Chris’ decision.

       *       *       *       *       *

They had had a fair day’s sport in the two estates that marched with one
another between Overfield and Great Keynes, and about fifteen stags had
been killed as well as a quantity of smaller game.

Ralph had ridden out after the party had left, and had found Sir
Nicholas at the close of the afternoon just as the last drive was about
to take place; and had stepped into his shelter to watch the finish. It
was a still, hot afternoon, and the air over the open space between the
copse in which they stood and the dense forest eighty yards away danced
in the heat.

Ralph nodded to his brother-in-law, who was flushed and sunburnt, and
then stood behind, running his eyes up and down that sturdy figure with
the tightly-gaitered legs set well apart and the little feathered cap
that moved this way and that as the sportsman peered through the
branches before him. Once he turned fierce eyes backwards at the whine
of one of the hounds, and then again thrust his hot dripping face into
the greenery.

Then very far away came a shout, and a chorus of taps and cries followed
it, sounding from a couple of miles away as the beaters after sweeping
a wide circle entered the thick undergrowth on the opposite side of the
wood. Sir Nicholas’ legs trembled, and he shifted his position a little,
half lifting his strong spliced hunting bow as he did so.

For a few minutes there was silence about them except for the distant
cries, and once for the stamp of a horse behind them. Then Sir Nicholas
made a quick movement, and dropped his hands again; a single rabbit had
cantered out from the growth opposite, and sat up with cocked ears
staring straight at the deadly shelter. Then another followed; and again
in a sudden panic the two little furry bodies whisked back into cover.

Ralph marvelled at this strange passion that could set a reasonable man
twitching and panting like the figure in front of him. He himself was a
good rider, and a sufficiently keen hunter when his blood was up; but
this brother-in-law of his seemed to live for little else. Day after
day, as Ralph knew, from the beginning of the season to the end he was
out with his men and hounds, and the rest of the year he seemed to spend
in talking about the sport, fingering and oiling his weapons through
long mornings, and elaborating future campaigns, in which the quarries’
chances should be reduced to a minimum.

       *       *       *       *       *

On a sudden Sir Nicholas’s figure stiffened and then relaxed. A doe had
stepped out noiselessly from the cover, head up and feet close together,
sniffing up wind--and they were shooting no does this month. Then again
she moved along against the thick undergrowth, stepping delicately and
silently, and vanished without a sound a hundred yards along to the
left.

The cries and taps were sounding nearer now, and at any moment the game
might appear. Sir Nicholas shifted his position again a little, and
simultaneously the scolding voice of a blackbird rang out in front, and
he stopped again. At the same moment a hare, mad with fright, burst out
of the cover, making straight for the shelter. Sir Nicholas’ hands rose,
steady now the crisis had come; and Ralph leaning forward touched him on
the shoulder and pointed.

A great stag was standing in the green gloom within the wood eighty
yards away, with a couple of does at his flank. Then as a shout sounded
out near at hand, he bolted towards the shelter in a line that would
bring him close to it. Ralph crouched down, for he had left his bow with
his man an hour earlier, and one of the hounds gave a stifled yelp as
Nicholas straightened himself and threw out his left foot. Either the
sound or the movement startled the great brown beast in front, and as
the arrow twanged from the string he checked and wheeled round, and went
off like the wind, untouched. A furious hiss of the breath broke from
Nicholas, and he made a swift sign as he turned to his horse; and in a
moment the two lithe hounds had leapt from the shelter and were flying
in long noiseless leaps after the disappearing quarry; the does,
confused by the change of direction, had whisked back into cover. A
moment later Nicholas too was after the hounds, his shoulders working
and his head thrust forward, and a stirrup clashed and jingled against
the saddle.

Ralph sat down on the ground smiling. It gave him a certain pleasure to
see such a complete discomfiture; Nicholas was always so amusingly angry
when he failed, and so full of reasons.

The forest was full of noises now; a crowd of starlings were protesting
wildly overhead, there were shouts far away and the throb of hoofs, and
the ground game was pouring out of the undergrowth and dispersing in
all directions. Once a boar ran past, grumbling as he went, turning a
wicked and resentful eye on the placid gentleman in green who sat on the
ground, but who felt for his long dirk as he saw the fury on the brute’s
face and the foam on the tusks. But the pig thought discretion was best,
and hurried on complaining. More than one troop of deer flew past, the
does gathered round their lord to protect him, all swerving together
like a string of geese as they turned the corner of the shelter and
caught sight of Ralph; but the beaters were coming out now, whistling
and talking as they came, and gathering into groups of two or three on
the ground, for the work was done, and it had been hot going.

Mary Maxwell appeared presently on her grey horse, looking slender and
dignified in her green riding-suit with the great plume shading her
face, and rode up to Ralph whom she had seen earlier in the afternoon.

“My husband?” she enquired looking down at Ralph who was lying with his
hat over his eyes.

“He left me just now,” said her brother, “very hot and red, after a stag
which he missed. That will mean some conversation to-night, Minnie.”

She smiled down at him.

“I shall agree with him, you know,” she said.

“Of course you will; it is but right. And I suppose I shall too.”

“Will you wait for him? Tell him we are going home by the mill. It is
all over now.”

Ralph nodded, and Mary moved off down the glade to join the others.

Ralph began to wonder how Nicholas would take the news of Chris’
decision. Mary, he knew very well, would assent to it quietly as she
did to all normal events, even though they were not what she would have
wished; and probably her husband would assent too, for he had a great
respect for a churchman. For himself his opinions were divided and he
scarcely knew what he thought. From the temporal point of view Chris’
step would be an advantage to him, for the vow of poverty would put an
end to any claims upon the estate on the part of the younger son; but
Ralph was sufficiently generous not to pay much attention to this. From
the social point of view, no great difference would be made; it was as
respectable to have a monk for a brother as a small squire, and Chris
could never be more than this unless he made a good marriage. From the
spiritual point of view--and here Ralph stopped and wondered whether it
was very seriously worth considering. It was the normal thing of course
to believe in the sublimity of the religious life and its peculiar
dignity; but the new learning was beginning to put questions on the
subject that had very considerably affected the normal view in Ralph’s
eyes. In that section of society where new ideas are generated and to
which Ralph himself belonged, there were very odd tales being told; and
it was beginning to be thought possible that monasticism had
over-reached itself, and that in trying to convert the world it had
itself been converted by the world. Ralph was proud enough of the honour
of his family to wonder whether it was an unmixed gain that his own
brother should join such ranks as these. And lastly there were the facts
that he had learnt from his association with Cromwell that made him
hesitate more than ever in giving Chris his sympathy. He had been
thinking these points over in the parlour the night before when the
others had left him, and during the day in the intervals of the sport;
and he was beginning to come to the conclusion that all things
considered he had better just acquiesce in the situation, and neither
praise nor blame overmuch.

It was a sleepy afternoon. The servants had all gone by now, and the
horn-blowings and noises had died away in the direction of the mill;
there was no leisure for stags to bray, as they crouched now far away in
the bracken, listening large-eyed and trumpet-eared for the sounds of
pursuit; only the hum of insect life in the hot evening sunshine filled
the air; and Ralph began to fall asleep, his back against a fallen
trunk.

Then he suddenly awakened and saw his brother-in-law, black against the
sky, looking down at him, from the saddle.

“Well?” said Ralph, not moving.

Nicholas began to explain. There were a hundred reasons, it seemed, for
his coming home empty-handed; and where were his men?

“They are all gone home,” said Ralph, getting up and stretching himself.
“I waited for you. It is all over.”

“You understand,” said Nicholas, putting his horse into motion, and
beginning to explain all over again, “you understand that it had not
been for that foul hound yelping, I should have had him here. I never
miss such a shot; and then when we went after him--”

“I understand perfectly, Nick,” said Ralph. “You missed him because you
did not shoot straight, and you did not catch him because you did not go
fast enough. A lawyer could say no more.”

Nicholas threw back his head and laughed loudly, for the two were good
friends.

“Well, if you will have it,” he said, “I was a damned fool. There! A
lawyer dare not say as much--not to me, at any rate.”

Ralph found his man half a mile further on coming to meet him with his
horse, and he mounted and rode on with Nicholas towards the mill.

“I have something to tell you,” he said presently. “Chris is to be a
monk.”

“Mother of God!” cried Nicholas, half checking his horse, “and when was
that arranged?”

“Last night,” went on Ralph. “He went to see the Holy Maid at St.
Sepulchre’s, and it seems that she told him he had a vocation; so there
is an end of it.”

“And what do you all think of it?” asked the other.

“Oh! I suppose he knows his business.”

Nicholas asked a number of questions, and was informed that Chris
proposed to go to Lewes in a month’s time. He was already twenty-three,
the Prior had given his conditional consent before, and there was no
need for waiting. Yes, they were Cluniacs; but Ralph believed that they
were far from strict just at present. It need not be the end of Chris so
far as this world was concerned.

“But you must not say that to him,” he went on, “he thinks it is heaven
itself between four walls, and we shall have a great scene of farewell.
I think I must go back to town before it takes place: I cannot do that
kind of thing.”

Nicholas was not attending, and rode on in silence for a few yards,
sucking in his lower lip.

“We are lucky fellows, you and I,” he said at last, “to have a monk to
pray for us.”

Ralph glanced at him, for he was perfectly grave, and a rather intent
and awed look was in his eyes.

“I think a deal of that,” he went on, “though I cannot talk to a
churchman as I should. I had a terrible time with my Lord of Canterbury
last year, at Oxford. He was not a hunter like this one, and I knew not
what else to speak of.”

Ralph’s eyes narrowed with amusement.

“What did you say to him?” he asked.

“I forget,” said Nicholas, “and I hope my lord did. Mary told me I
behaved like a fool. But this one is better, I hear. He is at Ashford
now with his hounds.”

They talked a little more about Chris, and Ralph soon saw on which side
Nicholas ranged himself. It was an unfeigned pleasure to this hunting
squire to have a monk for a brother-in-law; there was no knowing how
short purgatory might not be for them all under the circumstances.

It was evident, too, when they came up with the others a couple of miles
further on, that Nicholas’s attitude towards the young man had undergone
a change. He looked at him with a deep respect, refrained from
criticising his bloodless hands, and was soon riding on in front beside
him, talking eagerly and deferentially, while Ralph followed with Mary
and his father.

“You have heard?” he said to her presently.

“Father has just told me,” she said. “We are very much pleased--dear
Chris!”

“And then there is Meg,” put in her father.

“Oh! Meg; yes, I knew she would. She is made for a nun.”

Sir James edged his horse in presently close to Ralph, as Mary went in
front through a narrow opening in the wood.

“Be good to him,” he said. “He thinks so much of you.”

Ralph glanced up and smiled into the tender keen eyes that were looking
into his own.

“Why, of course, sir,” he said.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was an immense pleasure to Chris to notice the difference in
Nicholas’s behaviour towards him. There was none of that loud and
cheerful rallying that stood for humour, no criticisms of his riding or
his costume. The squire asked him a hundred questions, almost nervously,
about the Holy Maid and himself, and what had passed between them.

“They say the Host was carried to her through the air from Calais,
Chris, when the King was there. Did you hear her speak of that?”

Chris shook his head.

“There was not time,” he said.

“And then there was the matter of the divorce--” Nicholas turned his
head slightly; “Ralph cannot hear us, can he? Well--the matter of the
divorce--I hear she denounced that, and would have none of it, and has
written to the Pope, too.”

“They were saying something of the kind,” said Chris, “but I thought it
best not to meddle.”

“And what did she say to you?”

Chris told him the story, and Nicholas’s eyes grew round and fixed as he
listened; his mouth was a little open, and he murmured inarticulate
comments as they rode together up from the mill.

“Lord!” he said at last, “and she said all that about hell. God save us!
And her tongue out of her mouth all the while! And did you see anything
yourself? No devils or angels?”

“I saw nothing,” said Chris. “I just listened, but she saw them.”

“Lord!” said Nicholas again, and rode on in profound silence.

The Maxwells were to stay to supper at the Court; and drive home
afterwards; so there was no opportunity for Chris to go down and bathe
in the lake as he usually did in summer after a day’s hunting, for
supper was at seven o’clock, and he had scarcely more than time to
dress.

Nicholas was very talkative at supper, and poured out all that Chris had
told him, with his usual lack of discretion; for the other had already
told the others once all the details that he thought would interest
them.

“They were talking about the divorce,” he broke out, and then stopped
and eyed Ralph craftily; “but I had better not speak of that here--eh,
Chris?”

Ralph looked blandly at his plate.

“Chris did not mention that,” he said. “Tell us, Nick.”

“No, no,” cried Nicholas. “I do not want you to go with tales to town.
Your ears are too quick, my friend. Then there was that about the Host
flying from Calais, eh, Chris? No, no; you said you had heard nothing of
that.”

Chris looked up and his face was a little flushed.

“No, Nick,” he said.

“There seems to have been a great deal that Chris did not tell us--”
began Ralph.

Sir James glanced swiftly from his seat under the canopy.

“He told us all that was needed,” he said.

“Aha!” broke out Nicholas again, “but the Holy Maid said that the King
would not live six months if he--”

Chris’s face was full of despair and misery, and his father interrupted
once more.

“We had better not speak of that, my son,” he said to Nicholas. “It is
best to leave such things alone.”

Ralph was smiling broadly with tight lips by now.

“By my soul, Nick, you are the maddest wind-bag I have ever heard. All
our heads might go for what you have said to-night. Thank God the
servants are gone.”

“Nick,” cried Mary imploringly, “do hold your tongue.”

Lady Torridon looked from one to the other with serene amusement, and
there was an odd pause such as generally fell when she showed signs of
speaking. Her lips moved but she said nothing, and ran her eyes over the
silver flagons before her.

When the Maxwells had gone at last, and prayers were over, Chris slipped
across the Court with a towel, and went up to the priest’s room over the
sacristy. Mr. Carleton looked up from his lamp and rose.

“Yes, Chris,” he said, “I will come. The moon will be up soon.”

They went down together through the sacristy door on to the level
plateaux of lawns that stretched step after step down to the dark lake.
The sky was ablaze with stars, and in the East there was a growing light
in the quarter where the moon was at its rising. The woods beyond the
water were blotted masses against the sky; and the air was full of the
rich fragrance of the summer night. The two said very little, and the
priest stopped on the bank as Chris stepped out along the little boarded
pier that ran out among the rushes into deep water. There was a scurry
and a cry, and a moor-hen dashed out from under cover, and sped across
the pond, scattering the silver points that hung there motionless,
reflected from the heaven overhead.

Chris was soon ready, and stood there a moment, a pale figure in the
gloom, watching the shining dots rock back again in the ripples to
motionlessness. Then he lifted his hands and plunged.

It seemed to him, as he rose to the surface again, as if he were
swimming between two sides. As he moved softly out across the middle,
and a little ripple moved before him, the water was invisible. There was
only a fathomless gulf, as deep below as the sky was high above, pricked
with stars. As he turned his head this way and that the great trees,
high overhead, seemed less real than those two immeasurable spaces above
and beneath. There was a dead silence everywhere, only broken by the
faint suck of the water over his shoulder, and an indescribably sweet
coolness that thrilled him like a strain of music. Under its influence,
again, as last night, the tangible, irritating world seemed to sink out
of his soul; here he was, a living creature alone in a great silence
with God, and nothing else was of any importance.

He turned on his back, and there was the dark figure on the bank
watching him, and above it the great towered house, with its half-dozen
lighted windows along its eastern side, telling him of the world of men
and passion.

“Look,” came the priest’s voice, and he turned again, and over the
further bank, between two tall trees, shone a great silver rim of the
rising moon. A path of glory was struck now across the black water, and
he pleased himself by travelling up it towards the remote splendour,
noticing as he went how shadows had sprung into being in that moment,
and how the same light that made the glory made the dark as well. His
soul seemed to emerge a stage higher yet from the limits in which the
hot day and the shouting and the horns and the crowded woods had
fettered it. How remote and little seemed Ralph’s sneers and Nicholas’s
indiscretions and Mary’s pity! Here he moved round in a cooler and
serener mood. That keen mood, whether physical or spiritual he did not
care to ask, made him inarticulate as he walked up with the priest ten
minutes later. But Mr. Carleton seemed to understand.

“There are some things besides the divorce best not talked about,” he
said, “and I think bathing by starlight is one of them.”

They passed under the chapel window presently, and Chris noticed with an
odd sensation of pleasure the little translucent patch of colour between
the slender mullions thrown by the lamp within--a kind of reflex or
anti-type of the broad light shining over the water.

“Come up for a while,” went on the priest, as they reached the
side-entrance, “if you are not too tired.”

The two went through the sacristy-door, locking it behind them, and up
the winding stairs in the turret at the corner to the priest’s chamber.
Chris threw himself down, relaxed and happy, in the tall chair by the
window, where he could look out and see the moon, clear of the trees
now, riding high in heaven.

“That was a pity at supper,” said the priest presently, as he sat at the
table. “I love Sir Nicholas and think him a good Christian, but he is
scarcely a discreet one.”

“Tell me, father,” broke out Chris, “what is going to happen?”

Mr. Carleton looked at him smiling. He had a pleasant ugly face, with
little kind eyes and sensitive mouth.

“You must ask Mr. Ralph,” he said, “or rather you must not. But he knows
more than any of us.”

“I wish he would not speak like that.”

“Dear lad,” said the priest, “you must not feel it like that. Remember
our Lord bore contempt as well as pain.”

There was silence a moment, and then Chris began again. “Tell me about
Lewes, father. What will it be like?”

“It will be bitterly hard,” said the priest deliberately. “Christ Church
was too bitter for me, as you know. I came out after six months, and the
Cluniacs are harder. I do not know if I lost my vocation or found it;
but I am not the man to advise you in either case.”

“Ralph thinks it is easy enough. He told me last night in the carriage
that I need not trouble myself, and that monks had a very pleasant time.
He began to tell me some tale about Glastonbury, but I would not hear
it.”

“Ah,” said the chaplain regretfully, “the world’s standard for monks is
always high. But you will find it hard enough, especially in the first
year. But, as I said, I am not the man to advise you--I failed.”

Chris looked at him with something of pity in his heart, as the priest
fingered the iron pen on the table, and stared with pursed lips and
frowning forehead. The chaplain was extraordinarily silent in public,
just carrying on sufficient conversation not to be peculiar or to seem
morose, but he spoke more freely to Chris, and would often spend an hour
or two in mysterious talk with Sir James. Chris’s father had a very
marked respect for the priest, and had had more than one sharp word with
his wife, ten years before when he had first come to the house, and had
found Lady Torridon prepared to treat her chaplain with the kind of
respect that she gave to her butler. But the chaplain’s position was
secured by now, owing in a large measure to his own tact and
unobtrusiveness, and he went about the house a quiet, sedate figure of
considerable dignity and impressiveness, performing his duties
punctually and keeping his counsel. He had been tutor to both the sons
for a while, to Ralph only for a few months, but to Chris since his
twelfth birthday, and the latter had formed with him a kind of peaceful
confederacy, often looking in on him at unusual hours, always finding
him genial, although very rarely confidential. It was to Mr. Carleton,
too, that Chris owed his first drawings to the mystical life of prayer;
there was a shelf of little books in the corner by the window of the
priest’s room, from which he would read to the boy aloud, first
translating them into English as he went, and then, as studies
progressed, reading the Latin as it stood; and that mysteriously
fascinating world in which great souls saw and heard eternal things and
talked familiarly with the Saviour and His Blessed Mother had first
dawned on the boy there. New little books, too, appeared from time to
time, and the volumes had overflowed their original home; and from that
fact Christopher gathered that the priest, though he had left the
external life of Religion, still followed after the elusive spirit that
was its soul.

“But tell me,” he said again, as the priest laid the pen down and sat
back in his chair, crossing his buckled feet beneath the cassock; “tell
me, why is it so hard? I am not afraid of the discipline or the food.”

“It is the silence,” said the priest, looking at him.

“I love silence,” said Chris eagerly.

“Yes, you love an hour or two, or there would be no hope of a vocation
for you. But I do not think you will love a year. However, I may be
wrong. But it is the day after day that is difficult. And there is no
relaxation; not even in the infirmary. You will have to learn signs in
your novitiate; that is almost the first exercise.”

The priest got up and fetched a little book from the corner cupboard.

“Listen,” he said, and then began to read aloud the instructions laid
down for the sign-language of novices; how they were to make a circle in
the air for bread since it was round, a motion of drinking for water,
and so forth.

“You see,” he said, “you are not even allowed to speak when you ask for
necessaries. And, you know, silence has its peculiar temptations as well
as its joys. There is accidie and scrupulousness and contempt of
others, and a host of snares that you know little of now.”

“But--” began Chris.

“Oh, yes; it has its joys, and gives a peculiar strength.”

Chris knew, of course, well enough by now in an abstract way what the
Religious discipline would mean, but he wished to have it made more
concrete by examples, and he sat long with the chaplain asking him
questions. Mr. Carleton had been, as he said, in the novitiate at
Canterbury for a few months, and was able to tell him a good deal about
the life there; but the differences between the Augustinians and the
Cluniacs made it impossible for him to go with any minuteness into the
life of the Priory at Lewes. He warned him, however, of the tendency
that every soul found in silence to think itself different from others,
and of so peculiar a constitution that ordinary rules did not apply to
it. He laid so much stress on this that the other was astonished.

“But it is true,” said Chris, “no two souls are the same.”

The priest smiled.

“Yes, that is true, too; no two sheep are the same, but the sheep nature
is one, and you will have to learn that for yourself. A Religious rule
is drawn up for many, not for one; and each must learn to conform
himself. It was through that I failed myself; I remembered that I was
different from others, and forgot that I was the same.”

Mr. Carleton seemed to take a kind of melancholy pleasure in returning
to what he considered his own failure, and Chris began to wonder whether
the thought of it was not the secret of that slight indication to
moroseness that he had noticed in him.

The moon was high and clear by now, and Chris often leaned his cheek on
the sash as the priest talked, and watched that steady shining shield
go up the sky, and the familiar view of lawns and water and trees,
ghostly and mystical now in the pale light.

The Court was silent as he passed through it near midnight, as the
household had been long in bed; the flaring link had been extinguished
two hours before, and the shadows of the tall chimneys lay black and
precise at his feet across the great whiteness on the western side of
the yard. Again the sense of the smallness of himself and his
surroundings, of the vastness of all else, poured over his soul; these
little piled bricks and stones, the lawns and woods round about, even
England and the world itself, he thought, as his mind shot out towards
the stars and the unfathomable spaces--all these were but very tiny
things, negligeable quantities, when he looked at them in the eternal
light. It was this thought, after all, that was calling him out of the
world, and had been calling him fitfully ever since his soul awoke eight
years ago, and knew herself and her God: and his heart expanded and grew
tremulous as he remembered once more that his vocation had been sealed
by a divine messenger, and that he would soon be gone out of this little
cell into the wide silent liberty of the most dear children of God.




CHAPTER III

THE ARRIVAL AT LEWES


Ralph relented as the month drew on, and was among those who wished
Chris good-bye on the afternoon of the July day on which he was to
present himself at Lewes. The servants were all drawn up at the back of
the terrace against the hall, watching Ralph, even more than his
departing brother, with the fascinated interest that the discreet and
dignified friend of Cromwell always commanded. Ralph was at his best on
such occasions, genial and natural, and showed a pleasing interest in
the girths of the two horses, and the exact strapping of the couple of
bags that Chris was to take with him. His own man, too, Mr. Morris, who
had been with him ever since he had come to London, was to ride with
Chris, at his master’s express wish; stay with him in the guest-house
that night, and return with the two horses and a precise report the next
morning.

“You have the hares for my Lord Prior,” he said impressively, looking at
the game that was hanging head downwards from the servant’s saddle.
“Tell him that they were killed on Tuesday.”

Sir James and his younger son were walking together a few yards away in
deep talk; and Lady Torridon had caused a chair to be set for her at the
top of the terrace steps where she could at once do her duty as a
mother, and be moderately comfortable at the same time. She hardly spoke
at all, but looked gravely with her enigmatic black eyes at the horses’
legs and the luggage, and once held up her hand to silence a small dog
that had begun to yelp with excitement.

“They must be going,” said Ralph, when all was ready; and at the same
moment Chris and his father came up, Sir James’s arm thrown over his
son’s shoulders.

The farewells were very short; it was impossible to indulge in sentiment
in the genial business-atmosphere generated by Ralph, and a minute later
Chris was mounted. Sir James said no more, but stood a little apart
looking at his son. Lady Torridon smiled rather pleasantly and nodded
her head two or three times, and Ralph, with Mr. Carleton, stood on the
gravel below, his hand on Chris’s crupper, smiling up at him.

“Good-bye, Chris,” he said, and added with an unusual piety, “God keep
you!”

As the two horses passed through the gatehouse, Chris turned once again
with swimming eyes, and saw the group a little re-arranged. Sir James
and Ralph were standing together, Ralph’s arm thrust through his
father’s; Mr. Carleton was still on the gravel, and Lady Torridon was
walking very deliberately back to the house.

       *       *       *       *       *

The distance to Lewes was about fourteen miles, and it was not until
they had travelled some two of them, and had struck off towards Burgess
Hill that Chris turned his head for Mr. Morris to come up.

It was very strange to him to ride through that familiar country, where
he had ridden hundreds of times before, and to know that this was
probably the last time that he would pass along those lanes, at least
under the same circumstances. It had the same effect on him, as a death
in the house would have; the familiar things were the same, but they
wore a new and strange significance. The few men and children he passed
saluted him deferentially as usual, and then turned fifty yards further
on and stared at the young gentleman who, as they knew, was riding off
on such an errand, and with such grave looks.

Mr. Morris came up with an eager respectfulness at Chris’s sign, keeping
a yard or two away lest the swinging luggage on his own horse should
discompose the master, and answered a formal question or two about the
roads and the bags, which Chris put to him as a gambit of conversation.
The servant was clever and well trained, and knew how to modulate his
attitude to the precise degree of deference due to his master and his
master’s relations; he had entered Ralph’s service from Cromwell’s own
eight years before. He liked nothing better than to talk of London and
his experiences there, and selected with considerable skill the topics
that he knew would please in each case. Now he was soon deep on the
subject of Wolsey, pausing respectfully now and again for corroboration,
or to ask a question the answer to which he knew a good deal better than
Chris himself.

“I understand, sir, that the Lord Cardinal had a wonderful deal of
furniture at York House: I saw some of it at Master Cromwell’s; his
grace sent it to him, at least, so I heard. Is that so, sir?”

Chris said he did not know.

“Well, I believe it was so, sir; there was a chair there, set with
agates and pearl, that I think I heard Mr. Ralph say had come from
there. Did you ever see my lord, sir?”

Chris said he had seen him once in a narrow street at Westminster, but
the crowd was so great he could not get near.

“Ah! sir; then you never saw him go in state. I remember once seeing
him, sir, going down to Hampton Court, with his gentlemen bearing the
silver pillars before him, and the two priests with crosses. What might
the pillars mean, sir?”

Again Chris confessed he did not know.

“Ah, sir!” said Morris reflectively, as if he had received a
satisfactory answer. “And there was his saddle, Mr. Christopher, with
silver-gilt stirrups, and red velvet, set on my lord’s mule. And there
was the Red Hat borne in front by another gentleman. At mass, too, he
would be served by none under the rank of an earl; and I heard that he
would have a duke sometimes for his lavabo. I heard Mr. Ralph say that
there was more than a hundred and fifty carts that went with the Lord
Cardinal up to Cawood, and that was after the King’s grace had broken
with him, sir; and he was counted a poor man.”

Chris asked what was in the carts.

“Just his stuff, sir,” said Mr. Morris reverentially.

The servant seemed to take a melancholy pleasure in recounting these
glories, but was most discreet about the political aspects of Wolsey,
although Chris tried hard to get him to speak, and he would neither
praise nor blame the fallen prelate; he was more frank, however, about
Campeggio, who as an Italian, was a less dangerous target.

“He was not a good man, I fear, Mr. Christopher. They told some very
queer tales of him when he was over here. But he could ride, sir, Master
Maxwell’s man told me, near as well as my Lord of Canterbury himself.
You know they say, sir, that the Archbishop can ride horses that none of
his grooms can manage. But I never liked to think that a foreigner was
to be sent over to do our business for us, and more than ever not such
an one as that.”

He proceeded to talk a good deal about Campeggio; his red silk and his
lace, his gout, his servants, his un-English ways; but it began to get a
little tiresome to Chris, and soon after passing through Ditchling, Mr.
Morris, having pointed across the country towards Fatton Hovel, and
having spoken of the ghost of a cow that was seen there with two heads,
one black and one white, fell gradually behind again, and Chris rode
alone.

They were coming up now towards the downs, and the great rounded green
shoulders heaved high against the sky, gashed here and there by white
strips and patches where the chalk glared in the bright afternoon sun.
Ditchling beacon rose to their right, a hundred feet higher than the
surrounding hills, and the high country sloped away from it parallel
with their road, down to Lewes. The shadows were beginning to lie
eastwards and to lengthen in long blue hollows and streaks against the
clear green turf.

Chris wondered when he would see that side of the downs again; his ride
was like a kind of farewell progress, and all that he looked on was
dearer than it had ever been before, but he comforted himself by the
thought of that larger world, so bright with revelation and so
enchanting in its mystery that lay before him. He pleased himself by
picturing this last journey as a ride through an overhung lane,
beautiful indeed, but dusky, towards shining gates beyond which lay
great tracts of country set with palaces alive with wonderful presences,
and watered by the very river of life.

He did not catch sight of Lewes until he was close upon it, and it
suddenly opened out beneath him, with its crowded roofs pricked by a
dozen spires, the Norman castle on its twin mounds towering to his left,
a silver gleam of the Ouse here and there between the plaster and timber
houses as the river wound beneath its bridges, and beyond all the vast
masses of the Priory straight in front of him to the South of the town,
the church in front with its tall central tower, a huddle of convent
roofs behind, all white against the rich meadows that lay beyond the
stream.

Mr. Morris came up as Chris checked his horse here.

“See, Mr. Christopher,” he said, and the other turned to see the town
gallows on the right of the road, not fifty yards away, with a ragged
shape or two hanging there, and a great bird rising heavily and winging
its way into the west. Mr. Morris’s face bore a look of judicial
satisfaction.

“We are making a sweep of them,” he said, and as a terrible figure, all
rags and sores, with blind red eyes and toothless mouth rose croaking
and entreating from the ditch by the road, the servant pointed with
tight lips and solemn eyes to Hangman’s Acre. Chris fumbled in his
purse, threw a couple of groats on to the ground, and rode on down the
hill.

His heart was beating fast as he went down Westgate Lane into the High
Street, and it quickened yet further as the great bells in the Priory
church began to jangle; for it was close on vesper time, and
instinctively he shook his reins to hasten his beast, who was picking
his way delicately through the filth and tumbled stones that lay
everywhere, for the melodious roar seemed to be bidding him haste and be
welcome. Mr. Morris was close beside him, and remarked on this and that
as they went, the spire of St. Ann’s away to the right, with St.
Pancras’s Bridge, a swinging sign over an inn with Queen Katharine’s
face erased, but plainly visible under Ann Boleyn’s, the tall mound
beyond the Priory crowned by a Calvary, and the roof of the famous
dove-cote of the Priory, a great cruciform structure with over two
thousand cells. But Christopher knew it all better than the servant,
and paid little attention, and besides, his excitement was running too
high. They came down at last through Antioch Street, Puddingbag Lane,
and across the dry bed of the Winterbourne, and the gateway was before
them.

The bells had ceased by now, after a final stroke. Mr. Morris sprang off
his horse, and drew on the chain that hung by the smaller of the two
doors. There was a sound of footsteps and a face looked out from the
grating. The servant said a word or two; the face disappeared, and a
moment later there was the turning of a key, and one leaf of the
horse-entrance rolled back. Chris touched his beast with his heel,
passed through on to the paved floor, and sat smiling and flushed,
looking down at the old lay-brother, who beamed up at him pleasantly and
told him he was expected.

Chris dismounted at once, telling the servant to take the horses round
to the stables on the right, and himself went across the open court
towards the west end of the church, that rose above him fifty feet into
the clear evening air, faced with marble about the two doors, and
crowned by the western tower and the high central spire beyond where the
bells hung. On the right lay the long low wall of the Cellarer’s
offices, with the kitchen jutting out at the lower end, and the
high-pitched refectory roof above and beyond it. The church was full of
golden light as he entered, darkening to dusk in the chapels on either
side, pricked with lights here and there that burned before the images,
and giving an impression of immense height owing to its narrowness and
its length. The air was full of rolling sound, sonorous and full, that
echoed in the two high vaults on this side and that of the high altar,
was caught in the double transepts, and lost in the chapels that opened
in a corona of carved work at the further end, for the monks were busy
at the _Opus Dei_, and the psalms rocked from side to side, as if the
nave were indeed a great ship ploughing its way to the kingdom of
heaven.

There were a few seats at the western end, and into one of these
Christopher found his way, signing himself first from the stoup at the
door, and inclining before he went in. Then he leaned his chin on his
hands and looked eagerly.

It was difficult to make out details clearly at the further end, for the
church was poorly lighted, and there was no western window; the glare
from the white roads, too, along which he had come still dazzled him,
but little by little, helped by his own knowledge of the place, he began
to see more clearly.

       *       *       *       *       *

High above him ran the lines of the clerestory, resting on the rounded
Norman arches, broken by the beam that held the mighty rood, with the
figures of St. Mary and St. John on either side; and beyond, yet higher,
on this side of the high altar, rose the lofty air of the vault ninety
feet above the pavement. To left and right opened the two western
transepts, and from where he knelt he could make out the altar of St.
Martin in the further one, with its apse behind. The image of St.
Pancras himself stood against a pillar with the light from the lamp
beneath flickering against his feet. But Christopher’s eyes soon came
back to the centre, beyond the screen, where a row of blackness on
either side in the stalls, marked where the monks rested back, and where
he would soon be resting with them. There were candles lighted at sparse
intervals along the book-rests, that shone up into the faces bent down
over the wide pages beneath; and beyond all rose the altar with two
steady flames crowning it against the shining halpas behind that cut it
off from the four groups of slender carved columns that divided the five
chapels at the extreme east. Half-a-dozen figures sat about the nave,
and Christopher noticed an old man, his white hair falling to his
shoulders, two seats in front, beginning to nod gently with sleep as the
soft heavy waves of melody poured down, lulling him.

He began now to catch the words, as his ears grew accustomed to the
sound, and he, too, sat back to listen.

“_Fiat pax in virtute tua: et abundantia in turribus tuis;” “Propter
fratres meos et proximos meos_:” came back the answer, “_loquebar pacem
de te_.” And once more: “_Propter domum Domini Dei nostri: quaesivi bona
tibi_.”

Then there was a soft clattering roar as the monks rose to their feet,
and in double volume from the bent heads sounded out the _Gloria Patri_.

It was overwhelming to the young man to hear the melodious tumult of
praise, and to remember that in less than a week he would be standing
there among the novices and adding his voice. It seemed to him as if he
had already come into the heart of life that he had felt pulsating round
him as he swam in the starlight a month before. It was this that was
reality, and the rest illusion. Here was the end for which man was made,
the direct praise of God; here were living souls eager and alert on the
business of their existence, building up with vibration after vibration
the eternal temple of glory in which God dwelt. Once he began to sing,
and then stopped. He would be silent here until his voice had been
authorized to join in that consecrated offering.

He waited until all was over, and the two lines of black figures had
passed out southwards, and the sacristan was going round putting out
the lights; and then he too rose and went out, thrilled and excited,
into the gathering twilight, as the bell for supper began to sound out
from the refectory tower.

He found Mr. Morris waiting for him at the entrance to the guest-house,
and the two went up the stairs at the porter’s directions into the
parlour that looked out over the irregular court towards the church and
convent.

Christopher sat down in the window seat.

Over the roofs opposite the sky was still tender and luminous, with rosy
light from the west, and a little troop of pigeons were wheeling over
the church in their last flight before returning home to their huge
dwelling down by the stream. The porter had gone a few minutes before,
and Christopher presently saw him returning with Dom Anthony Marks, the
guest-master, whom he had got to know very well on former visits. In a
fit of shyness he drew back from the window, and stood up, nervous and
trembling, and a moment later heard steps on the stairs. Mr. Morris had
slipped out, and now stood in the passage, and Chris saw him bowing with
a nicely calculated mixture of humility and independence. Then a black
figure appeared in the doorway, and came briskly through.

“My dear Chris,” he said warmly, holding out his hands, and Chris took
them, still trembling and excited.

They sat down together in the window-seat, and the monk opened the
casement and threw it open, for the atmosphere was a little heavy, and
then flung his arm out over the sill and crossed his feet, as if he had
an hour at his disposal. Chris had noticed before that extraordinary
appearance of ease and leisure in such monks, and it imperceptibly
soothed him. Neither would Dom Anthony speak on technical matters, but
discoursed pleasantly about the party at Overfield Court and the beauty
of the roads between there and Lewes, as if Chris were only come to pay
a passing visit.

“Your horses are happy enough,” he said. “We had a load of fresh beans
sent in to-day. And you, Chris, are you hungry? Supper will be here
immediately. Brother James told the guest-cook as soon as you came.”

He seemed to want no answer, but talked on genially and restfully about
the commissioners who had come from Cluny to see after their possessions
in England, and their queer French ways.

“Dom Philippe would not touch the muscadel at first, and now he cannot
have too much. He clamoured for claret at first, and we had to give him
some. But he knows better now. But he says mass like a holy angel of
God, and is a very devout man in all ways. But they are going soon.”

Dom Anthony fulfilled to perfection the ideal laid down for a
guest-master in the Custumal. He showed, indeed, the “cheerful
hospitality to guests” by which “the good name of the monastery was
enhanced, friendships multiplied, enmities lessened, God honoured, and
charity increased.” He recognised perfectly well the confused terror in
Christopher’s mind and his anxiety to make a good beginning, and
smoothed down the tendency to awkwardness that would otherwise have
shown itself. He had a happy tranquil face, with wide friendly eyes that
almost disappeared when he laughed, and a row of even white teeth.

As he talked on, Christopher furtively examined his habit, though he
knew every detail of it well enough already. He had, of course, left his
cowl, or ample-sleeved singing gown, in the sacristy on leaving the
church, and was in his black frock girded with the leather belt, and
the scapular over it, hanging to the ground before and behind. His hood,
Christopher noticed, was creased and flat as if he were accustomed to
sit back at his ease. He wore strong black leather boots that just
showed beneath his habit, and a bunch of keys, duplicates of those of
the camerarius and cook, hung on his right side. He was tonsured
according to the Benedictine pattern, and his lips and cheeks were
clean-shaven.

He noticed presently that Christopher was eyeing him, and put his hand
in friendly fashion on the young man’s knee.

“Yes,” he said, smiling, “yours is ready too. Dom Franklin looked it out
to-day, and asked me whether it would be the right size. But of the
boots I am not so sure.”

There was a clink and a footstep outside, and the monk glanced out.

“Supper is here,” he said, and stood up to look at the table--the
polished clothless top laid ready with a couple of wooden plates and
knives, a pewter tankard, salt-cellar and bread. There was a plain chair
with arms drawn up to it. The rest of the room, which Christopher had
scarcely noticed before, was furnished plainly and efficiently, and had
just that touch of ornament that was intended to distinguish it from a
cell. The floor was strewn with clean rushes; a couple of iron
candlesticks stood on the mantelpiece, and the white walls had one or
two religious objects hanging on them--a wooden crucifix opposite the
table, a framed card bearing an “Image of Pity” with an indulgenced
prayer illuminated beneath, a little statue of St. Pancras on a bracket
over the fire, and a clear-written copy of rules for guests hung by the
low oak door.

Dom Anthony nodded approvingly at the table, took up a knife and rubbed
it delicately on the napkin, and turned round.

“We will look here,” he said, and went towards the second door by the
fire. Christopher followed him, and found himself in the bedroom,
furnished with the same simplicity as the other; but with an iron
bedstead in the corner, a kneeling stool beside it, with a little French
silver image of St. Mary over it, and a sprig of dried yew tucked in
behind. A thin leather-bound copy of the Little Office of Our Lady lay
on the sloping desk, with another book or two on the upper slab. Dom
Anthony went to the window and threw that open too.

“Your luggage is unpacked, I see,” he said, nodding to the press beside
which lay the two trunks, emptied now by Mr. Morris’s careful hands.

“There are some hares, too,” said Christopher. “Ralph has sent them to
my Lord Prior.”

“The porter has them,” said the monk, “they look strangely like a
bribe.” And he nodded again with a beaming face, and his eyes grew
little and bright at his own humour.

He examined the bed before he left the room again, turned back the
sheets and pressed them down, and the straw rustled drily beneath;
glanced into the sweating earthenware jug, refolded the coarse towel on
its wooden peg, and then smiled again at the young man.

“Supper,” he said briefly.

Christopher stayed a moment with a word of excuse to wash off the dust
of his ride from his hands and face, and when he came back into the
sitting-room found the candles lighted, the wooden shutters folded over
the windows, and a basin of soup with a roast pigeon steaming on the
table. The monk was standing, waiting for him by the door.

“I must be gone, Chris,” he said, “but I shall be back before compline.
My Lord Prior will see you to-morrow. There is nothing more? Remember
you are at home now.”

And on Christopher’s assurances that he had all he could need, he was
gone, leisurely and cheerfully, and his footsteps sounded on the stairs.

Mr. Morris came up before Chris had finished supper, and as he silently
slipped away his plate and set another for the cheese, Chris remembered
with a nervous exultation that this would be probably the last time that
he would have a servant to wait on him. He was beginning to feel
strangely at home already; the bean soup was strong and savoury, the
beer cool; and he was pleasantly exercised by his ride. Mr. Morris, too,
in answer to his enquiries, said that he had been well looked after in
the servants’ quarters of the guest-house, and had had an entertaining
supper with an agreeable Frenchman who, it seemed, had come with the
Cluniac commissioners. Respect for his master and a sense of the
ludicrous struggled in Mr. Morris’s voice as he described the
foreigner’s pronunciation and his eloquent gestures.

“He’s not like a man, sir,” he said, and shook with reminiscent
laughter.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was half an hour before Dom Anthony returned, and after hospitable
enquiries, sat down by Chris again in the wide window-seat and began to
talk.

He told him that guests were not expected to attend the night-offices,
and that indeed he strongly recommended Chris doing nothing of the kind
at any rate that night; that masses were said at all hours from five
o’clock onwards; that prime was said at seven, and was followed by the
_Missa familiaris_ for the servants and work-people of the house.
Breakfast would be ready in the guest-house at eight; the chapter-mass
would be said at the half-hour and after the daily chapter which
followed it had taken place, the Prior wished to see Christopher. The
high mass was sung at ten, and dinner would be served at eleven. He
directed his attention, too, to the card that hung by the door on which
these hours were notified.

Christopher already knew that for the first three or four days he would
have to remain in the guest-house before any formal step was taken with
regard to him, but he said a word to Father Anthony about this.

“Yes,” said the monk, “my Lord Prior will tell you about that. But you
will be here as a guest until Sunday, and on that day you will come to
the morning chapter to beg for admission. You will do that for three
days, and then, please God, you will be clothed as a novice.”

And once more he looked at him with deep smiling eyes.

Chris asked him a few more questions, and Dom Anthony told him what he
wished to know, though protesting with monastic etiquette that it was
not his province.

“Dom James Berkely is the novice-master,” he said, “you will find him
very holy and careful. The first matter you will have to learn is how to
wear the habit, carry your hands, and to walk with gravity. Then you
will learn how to bow, with the hands crossed on the knees, so--” and he
illustrated it by a gesture--“if it is a profound inclination; and when
and where the inclinations are to be made. Then you will learn of the
custody of the eyes. It is these little things that help the soul at
first, as you will find, like--like--the bindings of a peach-tree, that
it may learn how to grow and bear its fruit. And the Rule will be given
you, and what a monk must have by rote, and how to sing. You will not be
idle, Chris.”

It was no surprise to Christopher to hear how much of the lessons at
first were concerned with external behaviour. In his visits to Lewes
before, as well as from the books that Mr. Carleton had lent him, he had
learnt that the perfection of the Religious Life depended to a
considerable extent upon minutiæ that were both aids to, and the result
of, a tranquil and recollected mind, the acquirement of which was part
of the object of the monk’s ambition. The ideal, he knew, was the
perfect direction of every part of his being, of hands and eyes, as well
as of the great powers of the soul; what God had joined together man
must not put asunder, and the man who had every physical movement under
control, and never erred through forgetfulness or impulse in these
little matters, presumably also was master of his will, and retained
internal as well as external equanimity.

The great bell began to toll presently for compline, and the
guest-master rose in the midst of his explanations.

“My Lord Prior bade me thank you for the hares,” he said. “Perhaps your
servant will take the message back to Mr. Ralph to-morrow. Come.”

They went down the stairs together and out into the summer twilight, the
great strokes sounding overhead in the gloom as they walked. Over the
high wall to the left shone a light or two from Lewes town, and beyond
rose up the shadowy masses of the downs over which Christopher had
ridden that afternoon. Over those hills, too, he knew, lay his old home.
As they walked together in silence up the paved walk to the west end of
the church, a vivid picture rose before the young man’s eyes of the
little parlour where he had sat last night--of his silent mother in her
black satin; his father in the tall chair, Ralph in an unwontedly easy
and genial mood lounging on the other side and telling stories of town,
of the chaplain with his homely, pleasant face, slipping silently out at
the door. That was the last time that all that was his,--that he had a
right and a place there. If he ever saw it again it would be as a guest
who had become the son of another home, with new rights and relations,
and at the thought a pang of uncontrollable shrinking pricked at his
heart.

But at the door of the church the monk drew his arm within his own for a
moment and held it, and Chris saw the shadowed eyes under his brows rest
on him tenderly.

“God bless you, Chris!” he said.




CHAPTER IV

A COMMISSION


Within a few days of Christopher’s departure to Lewes, Ralph also left
Overfield and went back to London.

He was always a little intolerant at home, and generally appeared there
at his worst--caustic, silent, and unsympathetic. It seemed to him that
the simple country life was unbearably insipid; he found there neither
wit nor affairs: to see day after day the same faces, to listen to the
same talk either on country subjects that were distasteful to him, or,
out of compliment to himself, political subjects that were unfamiliar to
the conversationalists, was a very hard burden, and he counted such
things as the price he must pay for his occasional duty visits to his
parents. He could not help respecting the piety of his father, but he
was none the less bored by it; and the atmosphere of silent cynicism
that seemed to hang round his mother was his only relief. He thought he
understood her, and it pleased him sometimes to watch her, to calculate
how she would behave in any little domestic crisis or incident that
affected her, to notice the slight movement of her lips and her eyelids
gently lowering and rising again in movements of extreme annoyance. But
even this was not sufficient compensation for the other drawbacks of
life at Overfield Court, and it was with a very considerable relief that
he stepped into his carriage at last towards the end of July, nodded and
smiled once more to his father who was watching him from the terrace
steps with a wistful and puzzled face, anxious to please, and heard the
first crack of the whip of his return journey.

He had, indeed, a certain excuse for going, for a despatch-rider had
come down from London with papers for him from Sir Thomas Cromwell, and
it was not hard to assume a serious face and announce that he was
recalled by affairs; and there was sufficient truth in it, too, for one
of the memoranda bore on the case of Elizabeth Barton, the holy maid of
Kent, and announced her apprehension. Cromwell however, did not actually
recall him, but mentioned the fact of her arrest, and asked if he had
heard much said of her in the country, and what the opinion of her was
in that district.

       *       *       *       *       *

The drive up to London seemed very short to him now; he went slowly
through the bundle of papers on which he had to report, annotating them
in order here and there, and staring out of the window now and again
with unseeing eyes. There were a dozen cases on which he was engaged,
which had been forwarded to him during his absence in the country--the
priest at High Hatch was reported to have taken a wife, and Cromwell
desired information about this; Ralph had ridden out there one day and
gossipped a little outside the parsonage; an inn-keeper a few miles to
the north of Cuckfield had talked against the divorce and the reigning
Consort; a mistake had been made in the matter of a preaching license,
and Cranmer had desired Cromwell to look into it; a house had been sold
in Cheapside on which Ralph had been told to keep a suspicious eye, and
he was asked his opinion on the matter; and such things as these
occupied his time fully, until towards four o’clock in the afternoon his
carriage rolled up to the horse-ferry at Lambeth, and he thrust the
papers back into his bag before stepping out.

On arriving at his own little house in Westminster, the rent of which
was paid by his master, he left his other servants to carry up the
luggage, and set out himself again immediately with Morris in a hackney
carriage for Chancery Lane.

As he went, he found himself for the hundredth time thinking of the
history of the man to whom he was going.

Sir Thomas Cromwell was beginning to rise rapidly from a life of
adventure and obscurity abroad. He had passed straight from the
Cardinal’s service to the King’s three years before, and had since then
been knighted, appointed privy-councillor, Master of the Jewel-house,
and Clerk of the Hanaper in the Court of Chancery. At the same time he
was actively engaged on his amazing system of espionage through which he
was able to detect disaffection in all parts of the country, and thereby
render himself invaluable to the King, who, like all the Tudors, while
perfectly fearless in the face of open danger was pitiably terrified of
secret schemes.

And it was to this man that he was confidential agent! Was there any
limit to the possibilities of his future?

Ralph found a carriage drawn up at the door and, on enquiry, heard that
his master was on the point of leaving; and even as he hesitated in the
entrance, Cromwell shambled down the stairs with a few papers in his
hand, his long sleeveless cloak flapping on each step behind him, and
his felt plumed cap on his head in which shone a yellow jewel.

His large dull face, clean shaven like a priest’s, lighted up briskly as
he saw Ralph standing there, and he thrust his arm pleasantly through
his agent’s.

“Come home to supper,” he said, and the two wheeled round and went out
and into the carriage. Mr. Morris handed the bag through the window to
his master, and stood bare-headed as the carriage moved off over the
newly laid road.

It would have been a very surprising sight to Sir James Torridon to see
his impassive son’s attitude towards Cromwell. He was deferential, eager
to please, nervous of rebuke, and almost servile, for he had found his
hero in that tremendous personality. He pulled out his papers now, shook
them out briskly, and was soon explaining, marking and erasing. Cromwell
leaned back in his corner and listened, putting in a word of comment now
and again, or dotting down a note on the back of a letter, and watching
Ralph with a pleasant, oblique look, for he liked to see his people
alert and busy. But he knew very well what his demeanour was like at
other times, and had at first indeed been drawn to the young man by his
surprising insolence of manner and impressive observant silences.

“That is very well, Mr. Torridon,” he said. “I will see to the license.
Put them all away.”

Ralph obeyed, and then sat back too, silent indeed, but with a kind of
side-long readiness for the next subject; but Cromwell spoke no more of
business for the present, only uttering short sentences about current
affairs, and telling his friend the news.

“Frith has been burned,” he said. “Perhaps you knew it. He was obstinate
to the end, my Lord Bishop reported. He threw Saint Chrysostom and Saint
Augustine back into their teeth. He gave great occasion to the funny
fellows. There was one who said that since Frith would have no
purgatory, he was sent there by my Lord to find out for himself whether
there be such a place or not. There was a word more about his manner of
going there, ‘Frith frieth,’ but ’twas not good. Those funny fellows
over-reach themselves. Hewet went with him to Smithfield and hell.”

Ralph smiled, and asked how they took it.

“Oh, very well. A priest bade the folk pray no more for Frith than for a
dog, but Frith smiled on him and begged the Lord to forgive him his
unkind words.”

He was going on to tell him a little more about the talk of the Court,
when the carriage drove up to the house in Throgmorton Street, near
Austin Friars, which Cromwell had lately built for himself.

“My wife and children are at Hackney,” he said as he stepped out. “We
shall sup alone.”

It was a great house, built out of an older one, superbly furnished with
Italian things, and had a large garden at the back on to which looked
the windows of the hall. Supper was brought up almost immediately--a
couple of woodcocks and a salad--and the two sat down, with a pair of
servants in blue and silver to wait on them. Cromwell spoke no more word
of business until the bottle of wine had been set on the table, and the
servants were gone. And then he began again, immediately.

“And what of the country?” he said. “What do they say there?” He took a
peach from the carved roundel in the centre of the table, and seemed
absorbed in its contemplation.

Ralph had had some scruples at first about reporting private
conversations, but Cromwell had quieted them long since, chiefly by the
force of his personality, and partly by the argument that a man’s duty
to the State over-rode his duty to his friends, and that since only talk
that was treasonable would be punished, it was simpler to report all
conversations in general that had any suspicious bearing, and that he
himself was most competent to judge whether or no they should be
followed up. Ralph, too, had become completely reassured by now that no
injury would be done to his own status among his friends, since his
master had never yet made direct use of any of his information in such a
manner as that it was necessary for Ralph to appear as a public witness.
And again, too, he had pointed out that the work had to be done, and
that was better for the cause of justice and mercy that it should be
done by conscientious rather than by unscrupulous persons.

He talked to him now very freely about the conversations in his father’s
house, knowing that Cromwell did not want more than a general specimen
sketch of public feeling in matters at issue.

“They have great faith in the Maid of Kent, sir,” he said. “My
brother-in-law, Nicholas, spoke of her prophecy of his Grace’s death. It
is the devout that believe in her; the ungodly know her for a fool or a
knave.”

“_Filii hujus saeculi prudentiores sunt_,”--quoted Cromwell gravely.
“Your brother-in-law, I should think, was a child of light.”

“He is, sir.”

“I should have thought so. And what else did you hear?”

“There is a good deal of memory of the Lady Katharine, sir. I heard the
foresters talking one day.”

“What of the Religious houses?”

Ralph hesitated.

“My brother Christopher has just gone to Lewes,” he said. “So I heard
more of the favourable side, but I heard a good deal against them, too.
There was a secular priest talking against them one day, with our
chaplain, who is a defender of them.”

“Who was he?” asked Cromwell, with the same sharp, oblique glance.

“A man of no importance, sir; the parson of Great Keynes.”

“The Holy Maid is in trouble,” went on the other after a minute’s
silence. “She is in my Lord of Canterbury’s hands, and we can leave her
there. I suppose she will be hanged.”

Ralph waited. He knew it was no good asking too much.

“What she said of the King’s death and the pestilence is enough to cast
her,” went on Cromwell presently. “And Bocking and Hadleigh will be in
his hands soon, too. They do not know their peril yet.”

They went on to talk of the friars, and of the disfavour that they were
in with the King after the unfortunate occurrences of the previous
spring, when Father Peto had preached at Greenwich before Henry on the
subject of Naboth’s vineyard and the end of Ahab the oppressor. There
had been a dramatic scene, Cromwell said, when on the following Sunday a
canon of Hereford, Dr. Curwin, had preached against Peto from the same
pulpit, and had been rebuked from the rood-loft by another of the
brethren, Father Elstow, who had continued declaiming until the King
himself had fiercely intervened from the royal pew and bade him be
silent.

“The two are banished,” said Cromwell, “but that is not the end of it.
Their brethren will hear of it again. I have never seen the King so
wrathful. I suppose it was partly because the Lady Katharine so
cossetted them. She was always in the church at the night-office when
the Court was at Greenwich, and Friar Forrest, you know, was her
confessor. There is a rod in pickle.”

Ralph listened with all his ears. Cromwell was not very communicative
on the subject of the Religious houses, but Ralph had gathered from
hints of this kind that something was preparing.

When supper was over and the servants were clearing away, Cromwell went
to the window where the glass glowed overhead with his new arms and
scrolls--a blue coat with Cornish choughs and a rose on a fess between
three rampant lions--and stood there, a steady formidable figure, with
his cropped head and great jowl, looking out on to the garden.

When the men had gone he turned again to Ralph.

“I have something for you,” he said, “but it is greater than those other
matters--a fool could not do it. Sit down.”

He came across the room to the fireplace, as Ralph sat down, and himself
took a chair by the table, lifting the baudkin cushion and settling it
again comfortably behind him.

“It is this,” he said abruptly. “You know that Master More has been in
trouble. There was the matter of the gilt flagon which Powell said he
had taken as a bribe, and the gloves lined with forty pound. Well, he
disproved that, and I am glad of it, glad of it,” he repeated steadily,
looking down at his ring and turning it to catch the light. “But there
is now another matter--I hear he has been practising with the Holy Maid
and hearkening to her ravings, and that my Lord of Rochester is in it
too. But I am not sure of it.”

Cromwell stopped, glanced up at Ralph a moment, and then down again.

“I am not sure of it,” he said again, “and I wish to be. And I think you
can help me.”

Ralph waited patiently, his heart beginning to quicken. This was a great
matter.

“I wish you to go to him,” said his master, “and to get him into talk.
But I do not see how it can be managed.”

“He knows I am in your service, sir,” suggested Ralph.

“Yes, yes,” said Cromwell a little impatiently, “that is it. He is no
fool, and will not talk. This is what I thought of. That you should go
to him from me, and feign that you are on his side in the matter. But
will he believe that?” he ended gloomily, looking at the other
curiously.

There was silence for a minute, while Cromwell drummed his fingers
softly on the table. Then presently Ralph spoke.

“There is this, sir,” he said. “I might speak to him about my brother
Chris who, as I told you, has gone to Lewes at the Maid’s advice, and
then see what Master More has to say.”

Cromwell still looked at him.

“Yes,” he said, “that seems reasonable. And for the rest--well, I will
leave that in your hands.”

They talked a few minutes longer about Sir Thomas More, and Cromwell
told the other what a quiet life the ex-Chancellor had led since his
resignation of office, of his house at Chelsea, and the like, and of the
decision that he had apparently come to not to mix any further in public
affairs.

“There is thunder in the air,” he said, “as you know very well, and
Master More is no mean weather-prophet. He mis-liked the matter of the
Lady Katharine, and Queen Anne is no friend of his. I think he is wise
to be quiet.”

Ralph knew perfectly well that this tolerant language did not represent
Cromwell’s true attitude towards the man of whom they were speaking, but
he assented to all that was said, and added a word or two about Sir
Thomas More’s learning, and of the pleasant manner in which he himself
had been received when he had once had had occasion to see him before.

“He was throwing Horace at me,” said the other, with a touch of
bitterness, “the last time that I was there. I do not know which he
loves best, that or his prayers.”

Again Ralph recognised an animus. Cromwell had suffered somewhat from
lack of a classical education.

“But it is a good thing to love the classics and devotion,” he went on
presently with a sententious air, “they are solaces in time of trouble.
I have found that myself.”

He glanced up at the other and down again.

“I was caught saying our Lady matins one day,” he said, “when the
Cardinal was in trouble. I remember I was very devout that morning.”

He went on to talk of Wolsey and of his relations with him, and Ralph
watched that heavy smooth face become reminiscent and almost
sentimental.

“If he had but been wiser;” he said. “I have noticed again and again the
folly of wise men. There is always clay mixed with gold. I suppose
nothing but the fire that Frith denied can purge it out; and my lord’s
was ambition.”

He wagged his head in solemn reprobation, and Ralph did not know whether
to laugh or to look grave. Then there fell a long silence, and Cromwell
again fell to fingering his signet-ring, taking it off his thumb and
rolling it on the smooth oak, and at last stood up with a brisker air.

“Well,” he said, “I have a thousand affairs, and my son Gregory is
coming here soon. Then you will see about that matter. Remember I wish
to know what Master More thinks of her, that--that I may know what to
think.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Ralph understood sufficiently clearly, as he walked home in the evening
light, what it was that his master wanted. It was no less than to catch
some handle against the ex-chancellor, though he had carefully abstained
from saying so. Ralph recognised the adroitness, and saw that while the
directions had been plain and easy to understand, yet that not one word
had been spoken that could by any means be used as a handle against
Cromwell. If anyone in England at that time knew how to wield speech it
was his master; it was by that weapon that he had prevailed with the
King, and still kept him in check; it was that weapon rashly used by his
enemies that he was continually turning against them, and under his
tutoring Ralph himself had begun to be practised in the same art.

Among other causes, too, of his admiration for Cromwell, was the
latter’s extraordinary business capacity. There was hardly an affair of
any importance in which he did not have a finger at least, and most of
them he held in the palm of his hand, and that, not only in the mass but
in their minutest details. Ralph had marvelled more than once at the
minutiæ that he had seen dotted down on the backs of old letters lying
on his master’s table. Matters of Church and State, inextricably
confused to other eyes, were simple to this man; he understood
intuitively where the key of each situation lay, and dealt with them one
after another briefly and effectively. And yet with all this no man wore
an appearance of greater leisure; he would gossip harmlessly for an
hour, and yet by the end had said all that he wished to say, and
generally learnt, too, from his companion whoever he might be, all he
wished to learn. Ralph had watched him more than once at this business;
had seen delicate subjects introduced in a deft unsuspicious sentence
that roused no alarm, and had marvelled at his power to play with men
without their dreaming of what was going forward.

And now it was Master More that was threatened. Ralph knew well that
there was far more behind the scenes than he could understand or even
perceive, and recognised that the position of Sir Thomas was more
significant than would appear, and that developments might be expected
to follow soon.

For himself he had no shrinking from his task. He understood that
government was carried on by such methods, and that More himself would
be the first to acknowledge that in war many things were permissible
that would be outrageous in times of peace, and that these were times of
war. To call upon a friend, to eat his bread and salt, and talk
familiarly with him, and to be on the watch all the while for a weak
spot through which that friend might be wounded, seemed to Ralph,
trained now and perfected in Cromwell’s school, a perfectly legitimate
policy, and he walked homewards this summer evening, pleased with this
new mark of confidence, and anxious to acquit himself well in his task.

       *       *       *       *       *

The house that Ralph occupied in Westminster was in a street to the west
of the Abbey, and stood back a little between its neighbours. It was a
very small one, of only two rooms in width and one in depth, and three
stories high; but it had been well furnished, chiefly with things
brought up from Overfield Court, to which Ralph had taken a fancy, and
which his father had not denied him. He lived almost entirely in the
first floor, his bedroom and sitting-room being divided by the narrow
landing at the head of the stairs that led up to the storey above, which
was occupied by Mr. Morris and a couple of other servants. The lower
storey Ralph used chiefly for purposes of business, and for interviews
which were sufficiently numerous for one engaged in so many affairs.
Cromwell had learnt by now that he could be trusted to say little and to
learn much, and the early acts of many little dramas that had ended in
tragedy had been performed in the two gravely-furnished rooms on the
ground floor. A good deal of the law-business, in its early stages,
connected with the annulling of the King’s marriage with Queen Katharine
had been done there; a great canonist from a foreign university had
explained there his views in broken English, helped out with Latin, to a
couple of shrewd-faced men, while Ralph watched the case for his master;
and Cromwell himself had found the little retired house a convenience
for meeting with persons whom he did not wish to frighten over much,
while Ralph and Mr. Morris sat alert and expectant on the other side of
the hall, with the door open, listening for raised voices or other signs
of a quarrel.

The rooms upstairs had been furnished with considerable care. The floors
of both were matted, for the plan involved less trouble than the
continual laying of clean rushes. The sitting-room was panelled up six
feet from the floor, and the three feet of wall above were covered with
really beautiful tapestry that Ralph had brought up from Overfield.
There was a great table in the centre, along one side of which rested a
set of drawers with brass handles, and in the centre of the table was a
deep well, covered by a flap that lay level with the rest of the top.
Another table stood against the wall, on which his meals were served,
and the door of a cupboard in which his plate and knives were kept
opened immediately above it, designed in the thickness of the wall.
There were half-a-dozen chairs, two or three other pieces of furniture,
a backed settle by the fire and a row of bookshelves opposite the
windows; and over the mantelpiece, against the tapestry, hung a picture
of Cromwell, painted by Holbein, and rejected by him before it was
finished. Ralph had begged it from the artist who was on the point of
destroying it. It represented the sitter’s head and shoulders in
three-quarter face, showing his short hair, his shrewd heavy face, with
its double chin, and the furred gown below.

Mr. Morris was ready for his master and opened the door to him.

“There are some letters come, Mr. Ralph, sir,” he said. “I have laid
them on your table.”

Ralph nodded, slipped off his thin cloak into his servant’s hands
without speaking, laid down his cane and went upstairs.

The letters were very much what he expected, and dealt with cases on
which he was engaged. There was an entreaty from a country squire near
Epping Forest, whose hounds had got into trouble with the King’s
foresters that he would intercede for him to Cromwell. A begging letter
from a monk who had been ejected from his monastery for repeated
misconduct, and who represented himself as starving; Ralph lifted this
to his nostrils and it smelt powerfully of spirits, and he laid it down
again, smiling to himself. A torrent of explanation from a schoolmaster
who had been reported for speaking against the sacrament of the altar,
calling the saints to witness that he was no follower of Frith in such
detestable heresy. A dignified protest from a Justice of the Peace in
Kent who had been reproved by Cromwell, through Ralph’s agency, for
acquitting a sturdy beggar, and who begged that he might in future deal
with a responsible person; and this Ralph laid aside, smiling again and
promising himself that he would have the pleasure of granting the
request. An offer, written in a clerkly hand, from a fellow who could
not sign his name but had appended a cross, to submit some important
evidence of a treasonable plot, on the consideration of secrecy and a
suitable reward.

A year ago such a budget would have given Ralph considerable pleasure,
and a sense of his own importance; but business had been growing on him
rapidly of late, as his master perceived his competence, and it gave him
no thrill to docket this one, write a refusal to that, a guarded answer
to another, and finally to open the well of his table and drop the
bundle in.

Then he turned round his chair, blew out one candle carefully, and set
to thinking about Master Thomas More.




CHAPTER V

MASTER MORE


It was not until nearly a month later that Ralph made an opportunity to
call upon Sir Thomas More. Cromwell had given him to understand that
there was no immediate reason for haste; his own time was tolerably
occupied, and he thought it as well not to make a show of over-great
hurry. He wrote to Sir Thomas, explaining that he wished to see him on a
matter connected with his brother Christopher, and received a courteous
reply begging him to come to dinner on the following Thursday, the
octave of the Assumption, as Sir Thomas thought it proper to add.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was a wonderfully pleasant house, Ralph thought, as his wherry came
up to the foot of the garden stairs that led down from the lawn to the
river. It stood well back in its own grounds, divided from the river by
a wall with a wicket gate in it. There was a little grove of trees on
either side of it; a flock of pigeons were wheeling about the
bell-turret that rose into the clear blue sky, and from which came a
stroke or two, announcing the approach of dinner-time as he went up the
steps.

There was a figure lying on its face in the shadow by the house, as
Ralph came up the path, and a small dog, that seemed to be trying to dig
the head out from the hands in which it was buried, ceased his
excavations and set up a shrill barking. The figure rolled over, and sat
up; the pleasant brown face was all creased with laughter; small pieces
of grass were clinging to the long hair, and Ralph, to his amazement,
recognised the ex-Lord Chancellor of England.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said More, rising and shaking himself. “I had
no idea--you take me at a disadvantage; it is scarcely dignified”--and
he stopped, smiling and holding out one hand, while he stretched the
other deprecatingly, to quiet that insistent barking.

Ralph had a sensation of mingled contempt and sympathy as he took his
hand.

“I had the honour of seeing you once before, Master More,” he said.

“Why, yes,” said More, “and I hope I cut a better figure last time, but
Anubis would take no refusal. But I am ashamed, and beg you will not
speak of it to Mrs. More. She is putting on a new coif in your honour.”

“I will be discreet,” said Ralph, smiling.

They went indoors almost immediately, when Sir Thomas had flicked the
grass sufficiently off his gown to escape detection, and straight
through to the hall where the table was laid, and three or four girls
were waiting.

“Your mother is not here yet, I see,” said Sir Thomas, when he had made
Ralph known to his daughters, and the young man had kissed them
deferentially, according to the proper etiquette--“I will tell you
somewhat--hush--” and he broke off again sharply as the door from the
stairs opened, and a stately lady, with a rather solemn and
uninteresting face, sailed in, her silk skirts rustling behind her, and
her fresh coif stiff and white on her head. A middle-aged man followed
her in, looking a little dejected, and made straight across to where the
ladies were standing with an eagerness that seemed to hint at a sense of
escape.

“Mrs. Alice,” said Sir Thomas, “this is Mr. Ralph Torridon, of whom you
have heard me speak. I was fortunate enough to welcome him on the lawn
just now.”

“I saw you, Mr. More,” said his wife with dignity, as she took Ralph’s
hand and said a word about the weather.

“Then I will confess,” said Sir Thomas, smiling genially round, “I
welcomed Mr. Torridon with the back of my head, and with Anubis biting
my ears.”

Ralph felt strangely drawn to this schoolboy kind of man, who romped
with dogs and lay on his stomach, and was so charmingly afraid of his
wife. His contempt began to melt as he looked at him and saw those wise
twinkling eyes, and strong humorous mouth, and remembered once more who
he was, and his reputation.

Sir Thomas said grace with great gravity and signed himself reverently
before he sat down. There was a little reading first of the Scriptures
and a commentary on it, and then as dinner went on Ralph began to attend
less and less to his hostess, who, indeed appeared wholly absorbed in
domestic details of the table and with whispering severely to the
servants behind her hand, and to listen and look towards the further end
where Sir Thomas sat in his tall chair, his flapped cap on his head, and
talked to his daughters on either side. Mr. Roper, the man who had come
in with Mrs. More, was sitting opposite Ralph, and seemed to be chiefly
occupied in listening too. A bright-looking tall girl, whom her father
had introduced by the name of Cecily, sat between Ralph and her father.

“Not at all,” cried Sir Thomas, in answer to something that Ralph did
not catch, “nothing of the kind! It was Juno that screamed. Argus would
not condescend to it. He was occupied in dancing before the bantams.”

Ralph lost one of the few remarks that Mrs. More addressed to him, in
wondering what this meant, and the conversation at the other end swept
round a corner while he was apologising. When he again caught the
current Sir Thomas was speaking of wherries.

“I would love to row a wherry,” he said. “The fellows do not know their
fortune; they might lead such sweet meditative lives; they do not, I am
well aware, for I have never heard such blasphemy as I have heard from
wherrymen. But what opportunities are theirs! If I were not your father,
my darling, I would be a wherryman. _Si cognovisses et tu quae ad pacem
tibi_! Mr. Torridon, would you not be a wherryman if you were not Mr.
Torridon?”

“I thought not this morning,” said Ralph, “as I came here. It seemed hot
rowing against the stream.”

“It is part of the day’s work,” said More. “When I was Chancellor I
loved nothing more than a hot summer’s day in Court, for I thought of my
cool garden where I should soon be walking. I must show you the New
Building after dinner, Mr. Torridon.”

Cecily and Margaret presently had a short encounter across the table on
some subject that Ralph did not catch, but he saw Margaret on the other
side flush up and bring her lips sharply together. Sir Thomas leapt into
the breach.

“_Unde leves animae tanto caluere furore?_” he cried, and glanced up at
Ralph to see if he understood the quotation, as the two girls dropped
their eyes ashamed.

“_Pugnavare pares, succubuere pares_,” said Ralph by a flash of
inspiration, and looking at the girls.

Sir Thomas’s eyes shone with pleasure.

“I did not know you were such a treasure, Mr. Torridon. Now, Master
Cromwell could not have done that.”

There fell a silence as that name was spoken, and all at the table eyed
Ralph.

“He was saying as much to me the other day,” went on Ralph, excited by
his success. “He told me you knew Horace too well.”

“And that my morals were corrupted by him,” went on More. “I know he
thinks that, but I had the honour of confuting him the other day with
regard to the flagon and gloves. Now, there is a subject for Martial,
Mr. Torridon. A corrupt statesman who has retired on his ill-gotten
gains disproves an accusation of bribery. Let us call him Atticus
‘Attice ... Attice’ ...--We might say that he put on the gloves lest his
forgers should be soiled while he drank from the flagon, or something of
the kind.”

Sir Thomas’s eyes beamed with delight as he talked. To make an apt
classical quotation was like wine to him, but to have it capped
appropriately was like drunkenness. Ralph blessed his stars that he had
been so lucky, for he was no great scholar, and he guessed he had won
his host’s confidence.

Dinner passed on quietly, and as they rose from table More came round
and took his guest by the arm.

“You must come with me and see my New Building,” he said, “you are
worthy of it, Mr. Torridon.”

He still held his arm affectionately as they walked out into the garden
behind the house, and as he discoursed on the joys of a country life.

“What more can I ask of God?” he said. “He has given me means and tastes
to correspond, and what man can say more. I see visions, and am able to
make them realities. I dream of a dovecote with a tiled roof, and
straightway build it; I picture a gallery and a chapel and a library
away from the clack of tongues, and behold there it is. The eye cannot
say to the hand, ‘I have no need of thee.’ To see and dream without the
power of performance is heart-breaking. To perform without the gift of
imagination is soul-slaying. The man is blessed that hath both eye and
hand, tastes and means alike.”

It was a very pleasant retreat that Sir Thomas More had built for
himself at the end of his garden, where he might retire when he wanted
solitude. There was a little entrance hall with a door at one corner
into the chapel, and a long low gallery running out from it, lined with
bookshelves on one side, and with an open space on the other lighted by
square windows looking into the garden. The polished boards were bare,
and there was a path marked on them by footsteps going from end to end.

“Here I walk,” said More, “and my friends look at me from those shelves,
ready to converse but never to interrupt. Shall we walk here, Mr.
Torridon, while you tell me your business?”

Ralph had, indeed, a touch of scrupulousness as he thought of his host’s
confidence, but he had learnt the habit of silencing impulses and of
only acting on plans deliberately formed; so he was soon laying bare his
anxiety about Chris, and his fear that he had been misled by the Holy
Maid.

“I am very willing, Mr. More,” he said, “that my brother should be a
monk if it is right, but I could not bear he should be so against God’s
leading. How am I to know whether the maid’s words are of God or no?”

Sir Thomas was silent a moment.

“But he had thoughts of it before, I suppose,” he said, “or he would not
have gone to her. In fact, you said so.”

Ralph acknowledged that this was so.

“--And for several years,” went on the other.

Again Ralph assented.

“And his tastes and habits are those of a monk, I suppose. He is long
at his prayers, given to silence, and of a tranquil spirit?”

“He is not always tranquil,” said Ralph. “He is impertinent sometimes.”

“Yes, yes; we all are that. I was very impertinent to you at dinner in
trying to catch you with Martial his epigram, though I shall not offend
again. But his humour may be generally tranquil in spite of it. Well, if
that is so, I do not see why you need trouble about the Holy Maid. He
would likely have been a monk without that. She only confirmed him.”

“But,” went on Ralph, fighting to get back to the point, “if I thought
she was trustworthy I should be the more happy.”

“There must always be doubtfulness,” said More, “in such matters. That
is why the novitiate is so severe; it is to show the young men the worst
at once. I do not think you need be unhappy about your brother.”

“And what is your view about the Holy Maid?” asked Ralph, suddenly
delivering his point.

More stopped in his walk, cocked his head a little on one side like a
clever dog, and looked at his companion with twinkling eyes.

“It is a delicate subject,” he said, and went on again.

“That is what puzzles me,” said Ralph. “Will you not tell me your
opinion, Mr. More?”

There was again a silence, and they reached the further end of the
gallery and turned again before Sir Thomas answered.

“If you had not answered me so briskly at dinner, Mr. Torridon, do you
know that I should have suspected you of coming to search me out. But
such a good head, I think, cannot be allied with a bad heart, and I
will tell you.”

Ralph felt a prick of triumph but none of remorse.

“I will tell you,” went on More, “and I am sure you will keep it
private. I think the Holy Maid is a good woman who has a maggot.”

Ralph’s spirits sank again. This was a very non-committing answer.

“I do not think her a knave as some do, but I think, to refer to what we
said just now, that she has a large and luminous eye, and no hand worth
mentioning. She sees many visions, but few facts. That tale about the
Host being borne by angels from Calais to my mind is nonsense. Almighty
God does not work miracles without reason, and there is none for that.
The blessed sacrament is the same at Dover as at Calais. And a woman who
can dream that can dream anything, for I am sure she did not invent it.
On other matters, therefore, she may be dreaming too, and that is why
once more I tell you that to my mind you can leave her out of your
thoughts with regard to your brother. She is neither prophetess nor
pythoness.”

This was very unsatisfactory, and Ralph strove to remedy it.

“And in the matter of the King’s death, Mr. More?” he said.

Again Sir Thomas stopped in his walk.

“Do you know, Mr. Torridon, I think we may leave that alone,” he said a
little abruptly. And Ralph sucked in his lip and bit it sharply at the
consciousness of his own folly.

“I hope your brother will be very happy,” went on the other after a
moment, “and I am sure he will be, if his call is from God, as I think
likely. I was with the Carthusians myself, you know, for four years,
and sometimes I think I should have stayed there. It is a blessed life.
I do not envy many folks, but I do those. To live in the daily
companionship of our blessed Lord and of his saints as those do, and to
know His secrets--_secreta Domini_--even the secrets of His Passion and
its ineffable joys of pain--that is a very fortunate lot, Mr. Torridon.
I sometimes think that as it was with Christ’s natural body so it is
with His mystical body: there be some members, His hands and feet and
side, through which the nails are thrust, though indeed there is not one
whole spot in His body--_inglorius erit inter viros aspectus ejus--nos
putavimus eum quasi leprosum_--but those parts of His body that are
especially pained are at once more honourable and more happy than those
that are not. And the monks are those happy members.”

He was speaking very solemnly, his voice a little tremulous, and his
kindly eyes were cast down, and Ralph watched him sidelong with a little
awe and pity mingled. He seemed so natural too, that Ralph thought that
he must have over-rated his own indiscretion.

A shadow fell across the door into the garden as they came near it, and
one of the girls appeared in the opening.

“Why, Meg,” cried her father, “what is it, my darling?”

“Beatrice has come, sir,” said the girl. “I thought you would wish to
know.”

More put out his arm and laid it round his daughter’s waist as she
turned with him.

“Come, Mr. Torridon,” he said, “if you have no more to say, let us go
and see Beatrice.”

There was a group on the lawn under one of the lime trees, two or three
girls and Mr. Roper, who all rose to their feet as the three came up.
More immediately sat down on the grass, putting his feet delicately
together before him.

“Will, fetch this gentleman a chair. It is not fit for Master
Cromwell’s friend to sit on the grass like you and me.”

Ralph threw himself down on the lawn instantly, entreating Mr. Roper not
to move.

“Well, well,” said Sir Thomas, “let be. Sit down too, Will, _et cubito
remanete presso_. Mr. Torridon understands that, I know, even if Master
Cromwell’s friend does not. Why, tillie-vallie, as Mrs. More says, I
have not said a word to Beatrice. Beatrice, this is Mr. Ralph Torridon,
and this, Mr. Torridon, is Beatrice. Her other name is Atherton, but to
me she is a feminine benediction, and nought else.”

Ralph rose swiftly and looked across at a tall slender girl that was
sitting contentedly on an outlying root of the lime tree, beside of Sir
Thomas, and who rose with him.

“Mr. More cannot let my name alone, Mr. Torridon,” she said tranquilly,
as she drew back after the salute. “He made a play upon it the other
day.”

“And have been ashamed of it ever since,” said More; “it was sacrilege
with such a name. Now, I am plain Thomas, and more besides. Why did you
send for me, Beatrice?”

“I have no defence,” said the girl, “save that I wanted to see you.”

“And that is the prettiest defence you could have made--if it does not
amount to corruption. Mr. Torridon, what is the repartee to that?”

“I need no advocate,” said the girl; “I can plead well enough.”

Ralph looked up at her again with a certain interest. She seemed on
marvellously good terms with the whole family, and had an air of being
entirely at her ease. She had her black eyes bent down on to a piece of
grass that she was twisting into a ring between her slender jewelled
fingers, and her white teeth were closed firmly on her lower lip as she
worked. Her long silk skirts lay out unregarded on the grass, and her
buckles gleamed beneath. Her voice was pleasant and rather deep, and
Ralph found himself wondering who she was, and why he had not seen her
before, for she evidently belonged to his class, and London was a small
place.

“I see you are making one more chain to bind me to you,” said More
presently, watching her.

She held it up.

“A ring only,” she said.

“Then it is not for me,” said More, “for I do not hold with Dr.
Melanchthon, nor yet Solomon in the matter of wives. Now, Mr. Torridon,
tell us all some secrets. Betray your master. We are all agog. Leave off
that ring, Beatrice, and attend.”

“I am listening,” said the girl as serenely as before, still intent on
her weaving.

“The King breakfasted this morning at eight of the clock,” said Ralph
gravely. “It is an undoubted fact, I had it on the highest authority.”

“This is excellent,” said Sir Thomas. “Let us all talk treason. I can
add to that. His Grace had a fall last night and lay senseless for
several hours.”

He spoke with such gravity that Ralph glanced up. At the same moment
Beatrice looked up from her work and their eyes met.

“He fell asleep,” added Sir Thomas.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was very pleasant to lie there in the shadow of the lime that
afternoon, and listen to the mild fooling, and Ralph forgot his
manners, and almost his errand too, and never offered to move. The grass
began to turn golden as the sun slanted to the West, and the birds began
to stir after the heat of the day, and to chirp from tree to tree. A
hundred yards away the river twinkled in the sun, seen beyond the trees
and the house, and the voices of the boatmen came, softened by distance
and water, as they plied up and down the flowing highway. Once a barge
went past under the Battersea bank, with music playing in the stern, and
Ralph raised himself on his elbow to watch it as it went down the stream
with flags flying behind, and the rhythmical throb of the row-locks
sounding time to the dancing melody.

Ralph did his best to fall in with the humour of the day, and told a
good story or two in his slow voice--among them one of his mother
exercising her gift of impressive silence towards a tiresome chatterbox
of a man, with such effect that the conversationalist’s words died on
his lips, after the third or fourth pause made for applause and comment.
He told the story well, and Lady Torridon seemed to move among them, her
skirts dragging majestically on the grass, and her steady, sombre face
looking down on them all beneath half-closed languid eye-lids.

“He has never been near us again,” said Ralph, “but he never fails to
ask after my mother’s distressing illness when I meet him in town.”

He was a little astonished at himself as he talked, for he was not
accustomed to take such pains to please, but he was conscious that
though he looked round at the faces, and addressed himself to More, he
was really watching for the effect on the girl who sat behind. He was
aware of every movement that she made; he knew when she tossed the ring
on the little sleeping brown body of the dog that had barked at him
earlier in the day, and set to work upon another. She slipped that on
her finger when she had done, and turned her hand this way and that, her
fingers bent back, a ruby catching the light as she did so, looking at
the effect of the green circle against the whiteness. But he never
looked at her again, except once when she asked him some question, and
then he looked her straight in her black eyes as he answered.

A bell sounded out at last again from the tower, and startled him. He
got up quickly.

“I am ashamed,” he said smiling, “how dare I stay so long? It is your
kindness, Mr. More.”

“Nay, nay,” said Sir Thomas, rising too and stretching himself. “You
have helped us to lose another day in the pleasantest manner
possible--you must come again, Mr. Torridon.”

He walked down with Ralph to the garden steps, and stood by him talking,
while the wherry that had been hailed from the other side made its way
across.

“Beatrice is like one of my own daughters,” he said, “and I cannot give
her better praise than that. She is always here, and always as you saw
her to-day. I think she is one of the strongest spirits I know. What did
you think of her, Mr. Torridon?”

“She did not talk much,” said Ralph.

“She talks when she has aught to say,” went on More, “and otherwise is
silent. It is a good rule, sir; I would I observed it myself.”

“Who is she?” asked Ralph.

“She is the daughter of a friend I had, and she lives just now with my
wife’s sisters, Nan and Fan. She is often in town with one of them. I am
astonished you have not met her before.”

The wherry slid up to the steps and the man in his great boots slipped
over the side to steady it.

“Now is the time to begin your philosophy,” said More as Ralph stepped
in, “and a Socrates is ready. Talk it over, Mr. Torridon.”




CHAPTER VI

RALPH’S INTERCESSION


Ralph was astonished to find how the thought of the tall girl he had met
at Sir Thomas More’s house remained with him. He had reported the result
of his interview with More himself to his master; and Cromwell had
received it rather coldly. He had sniffed once or twice.

“That was not very well done, Mr. Torridon. I fear that you have
frightened him, and gained nothing by it.”

Ralph stood silent.

“But I see you make no excuses,” went on Cromwell, “so I will make them
for you. I daresay he was frightened already; and knew all about what
had passed between her and the Archbishop. You must try again, sir.”

Ralph felt his heart stir with pleasure.

“I may say I have made friends with Mr. More, sir,” he said. “I had good
fortune in the matter of a quotation, and he received me kindly. I can
go there again without excusing my presence, as often as you will.”

Cromwell looked at him.

“There is not much to be gained now,” he said, “but you can go if you
will; and you may perhaps pick up something here and there. The more
friends you make the better.”

Ralph went away delighted; he had not wholly failed then in his master’s
business, and he seemed to have set on foot a business of his own; and
he contemplated with some excitement his future visits to Chelsea.

       *       *       *       *       *

He had his first word with the King a couple of months later. He had
often, of course, seen him before, once or twice in the House of Lords,
formidable and frowning on his throne, his gross chin on his hand,
barking out a word or two to his subjects, or instructing them in
theology, for which indeed he was very competent; and several times in
processions, riding among his gentlemen on his great horse, splendid in
velvet and gems; and he had always wondered what it was that gave him
his power. It could not be mere despotism, he thought, or his burly
English nature; and it was not until he had seen him near at hand, and
come within range of his personality that he understood why it was that
men bore such things from him.

He was sent for one afternoon by Cromwell to bring a paper and was taken
up at once by a servant into the gallery where the minister and the King
were walking together. They were at the further end from that at which
he entered, and he stood, a little nervous at his heart, but with his
usual appearance of self-possession, watching the two great backs turned
to him, and waiting to be called.

They turned again in a moment, and Cromwell saw him and beckoned,
himself coming a few steps to meet him. The King waited, and Ralph was
aware of, rather than saw, that wide, coarse, strong face, and the long
narrow eyes, with the feathered cap atop, and the rich jewelled dress
beneath. The King stood with his hands behind his back and his legs well
apart.

Cromwell took the paper from Ralph, who stepped back, hesitating what to
do.

“This is it, your Grace,” said the minister going back again. “Your
Grace will see that it is as I said.”

Ralph perceived a new tone of deference in his master’s voice that he
had never noticed before, except once when Cromwell was ironically
bullying a culprit who was giving trouble.

The King said nothing, took the paper and glanced over it, standing a
little aside to let the light fall on it.

“Your Grace will understand--” began Cromwell again.

“Yes, yes, yes,” said the harsh voice impatiently. “Let the fellow take
it back,” and he thrust the paper into Cromwell’s hand, who turned once
more to Ralph.

“Who is he?” said the King. “I have seen his face. Who are you?”

“This is Mr. Ralph Torridon,” said Cromwell; “a very useful friend to
me, your Grace.”

“The Torridons of Overfield?” questioned Henry once more, who never
forgot a face or a name.

“Yes, your Grace,” said Cromwell.

“You are tall enough, sir,” said the King, running his narrow eyes up
and down Ralph’s figure;--“a strong friend.”

“I hope so, your Grace,” said Ralph.

The King again looked at him, and Ralph dropped his eyes in the glare of
that mighty personality. Then Henry abruptly thrust out his hand to be
kissed, and as Ralph bent over it he was aware of the thick straight
fingers, the creased wrist, and the growth of hair on the back of the
hand.

       *       *       *       *       *

Ralph was astonished, and a little ashamed at his own excitement as he
passed down the stairs again. It was so little that had happened; his
own part had been so insignificant; and yet he was tingling from head to
foot. He felt he knew now a little better how it was that the King’s
will, however outrageous in its purposes, was done so quickly. It was
the sheer natural genius of authority and royalty that forced it
through; he had felt himself dominated and subdued in those few moments,
so that he was not his own master. As he went home through the street or
two that separated the Palace gate from his own house, he found himself
analysing the effect of that presence, and, in spite of its repellence,
its suggestion of coarseness, and its almost irritating imperiousness,
he was conscious that there was a very strong element of attractiveness
in it too. It seemed to him the kind of attractiveness that there is for
a beaten dog in the chastising hand: the personality was so overwhelming
that it compelled allegiance, and that not wholly one of fear. He found
himself thinking of Queen Katharine and understanding a little better
how it was that the refined, delicately nurtured and devout woman, so
constant in her prayers, so full of the peculiar fineness of character
that gentle birth and religion alone confer, could so cling to this
fierce lord of hers, throw herself at his feet with tears before all the
company, and entreat not to be separated from him, calling him her “dear
lord,” her “love,” and her most “merciful and gracious prince.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The transition from this train of thought to that bearing on Beatrice
was not a difficult one; for the memory of the girl was continually in
his mind. He had seen her half a dozen times now since their first
meeting; for he had availed himself to the full of Cromwell’s
encouragement to make himself at home at Chelsea; and he found that his
interest in her deepened every time. With a touch of amusement he found
himself studying Horace and Terence again, not only for Sir Thomas
More’s benefit, but in order to win his approval and his good report to
his household, among whom Beatrice was practically to be reckoned.

He was pleased too by More’s account of Beatrice.

“She is nearly as good a scholar as my dear Meg,” he had said one day.
“Try her, Mr. Torridon.”

Ralph had carefully prepared an apt quotation that day, and fired it off
presently, not at Beatrice, but, as it were, across her; but there was
not the faintest response or the quiver of an eyelid.

There was silence a moment; and then Sir Thomas burst out--

“You need not look so demure, my child; we all know that you
understand.”

Beatrice had given him a look of tranquil amusement in return.

“I will not be made a show of,” she said.

Ralph went away that day more engrossed than ever. He began to ask
himself where his interest in her would end; and wondered at its
intensity.

As he questioned himself about it, it seemed that to him it was to a
great extent her appearance of detached self-possession that attracted
him. It was the quality that he most desired for himself, and one which
he had in measure attained; but he was aware that in the presence of
Cromwell at least it deserted him. He knew well that he had found his
master there, and that he himself was nothing more than a
hero-worshipper before a shrine; but it provoked him to feel that there
was no one who seemed to occupy the place of a similar divinity with
regard to this girl. Obviously she admired and loved Sir Thomas
More--Ralph soon found out how deeply in the course of his visits--but
she was not in the least afraid of her friend. She serenely contradicted
him when she disagreed with what he said, would fail to keep her
appointments at his house with the same equanimity, and in spite of Sir
Thomas’s personality never appeared to give him more than a friendly and
affectionate homage. With regard to Ralph himself, it was the same. She
was not in the least awed by him, or apparently impressed by his
reputation which at this time was growing rapidly as that of a capable
and daring agent of Cromwell’s; and even once or twice when he
condescended to hint at the vastness of the affairs on which he was
engaged, in a desperate endeavour to rouse her admiration, she only
looked at him steadily a moment with very penetrating eyes, and began to
speak of something else. He began to feel discouraged.

       *       *       *       *       *

The first hint that Ralph had that he had been making a mistake in his
estimate of her, came from Margaret Roper, who was still living at
Chelsea with her husband Will.

Ralph had walked up to the house one bleak afternoon in early spring
along the river-bank from Westminster, and had found Margaret alone in
the dining-hall, seated by the window with her embroidery in her hand,
and a Terence propped open on the sill to catch the last gleams of light
from the darkening afternoon. She greeted Ralph warmly, for he was a
very familiar figure to them all by now, and soon began to talk, when he
had taken a seat by the wide open fireplace whence the flames flickered
out, casting shadows and lights round the high room, across the
high-hung tapestries and in the gloomy corners.

“Beatrice is here,” she said presently, “upstairs with father. I think
she is doing some copying for him.”

“She is a great deal with him,” observed Ralph.

“Why, yes; father thinks so much of her. He says that none can write so
well as she, or has such a quick brain. And then she does not talk, he
says, nor ask foolish woman-questions like the rest of us.” And Margaret
glanced up a moment, smiling.

“I suppose I must not go up,” said Ralph, a little peevishly; for he was
tired with his long day.

“Why, no, you must not,” said Margaret, “but she will be down soon, Mr.
Torridon.”

There was silence for a moment or two; and then Margaret spoke again.

“Mr. Torridon,” she said, “may I say something?” Ralph made a little
sound of assent. The warmth of the fire was making him sleepy.

“Well, it is this,” said Margaret slowly, “I think you believe that
Beatrice does not like you. That is not true. She is very fond of you;
she thinks a great deal of you,” she added, rather hastily.

Ralph sat up; his drowsiness was gone.

“How do you know that, Mrs. Roper?” he asked. His voice sounded
perfectly natural, and Margaret was reassured at the tone of it. She
could not see Ralph well; it was getting dark now.

“I know it well,” she said. “Of course we talk of you when you are
gone.”

“And does Mrs. Beatrice talk of me?”

“Not so much,” said Margaret, “but she listens very closely; and asks us
questions sometimes.” The girl’s heart was beating with excitement as
she spoke; but she had made up her mind to seek this opportunity. It
seemed a pity, she thought, that two friends of hers should so
misunderstood one another.

“And what kind of questions?” asked Ralph again.

“She wonders--what you really think--” went on Margaret slowly, bending
down over her embroidery, and punctuating her words with
stitches--“about--about affairs--and--and she said one day that--”

“Well?” said Ralph in the same tone.

“That she thought you were not so severe as you seemed,” ended Margaret,
her voice a little tremulous with amusement.

Ralph sat perfectly still, staring at the great fire-plate on which a
smoky Phoebus in relief drove the chariot of the sun behind the tall
wavering flames that rose from the burning logs. He knew very well why
Margaret had spoken, and that she would not speak without reason; but
the fact revealed was so bewilderingly new to him that he could not take
it in. Margaret looked at him once or twice a little uneasily; and at
last sighed.

“It is too dark,” she said, “I must fetch candles.”

She slipped out of the side-door that led to the servants’ quarters, and
Ralph was left alone. All his weariness was gone now; the whirl of
images and schemes with which his brain had been seething as he walked
up the river-bank half-an-hour before, had receded into obscurity; and
one dominating thought filled their place: What if Margaret were right?
And what did he mean to do himself? Surely he was not--

The door from the entrance passage opened, and a tall slender figure
stood there, now in light, now in shadow, as the flames rose and fell.

“Meg,” said a voice.

Ralph sat still a moment longer.

“Meg,” said Beatrice again, “how dark you are.”

Ralph stood up.

“Mrs. Roper has just gone,” he said, “you must put up with me, Mrs.
Beatrice.”

“Who is it?” said the girl advancing. “Mr. Torridon?”

She had a paper in her hand as she came across the floor, and Ralph drew
out a chair for her on the other side of the hearth.

“Yes,” he said. “Mrs. Roper has gone for lights. She will be back
immediately.”

Beatrice sat down.

“It is a troublesome word,” she said. “Master More cannot read it
himself, and has sent me to ask Meg. He says that every dutiful daughter
should be able to read her father’s hand.”

And Ralph could see a faint amused smile in her black eyes, as the
firelight shone on them.

“Master More always has an escape ready,” he said, as he too sat down.

The girl’s hand holding the paper suddenly dropped on to her knee, and
the man saw she was looking at him oddly.

“Yes?” he said interrogatively; and then--

“Why do you look at me like that, Mrs. Beatrice?”

“It is what you said. Do you really think that, Mr. Torridon?”

Ralph was bewildered for a moment.

“I do not understand,” he said.

“Do you truly think he always has an escape ready?” repeated the girl.

Then Ralph understood.

“You mean he is in danger,” he said steadily. “Well, of course he is.
There is no great man that is not. But I do not see why he should not
escape as he has always done.”

“You think that, Mr. Torridon?”

“Why, yes;” went on Ralph, a little hastily. “You remember the matter
of the bribe. See how he cleared himself. Surely, Mrs. Beatrice--”

“And you really think so,” said the girl. “I know that you know what we
do not; and I shall believe what you say.”

“How can I tell?” remonstrated Ralph. “I can only tell you that in this
matter I know nothing that you do not. Master More is under no
suspicion.”

Beatrice drew a breath of relief.

“I am glad I spoke to you, sir,” she said. “It has been on my mind. And
something that he said a few minutes ago frightened me.”

“What did he say?” asked Ralph curiously.

“Ah! it was not much. It was that no man knew what might come next; that
matters were very strange and dismaying--and--and that he wanted this
paper copied quickly, for fear--”

The girl stopped again, abruptly.

“I know what you feel, Mrs. Beatrice,” said Ralph gently. “I know how
you love Master More, and how terrified we may become for our friends.”

“What do you think yourself, Mr. Torridon,” she said suddenly, almost
interrupting him.

He looked at her doubtfully a moment, and half wished that Margaret
would come back.

“That is a wide question,” he said.

“Well, you know what I mean,” she said coolly, completely herself again.
She was sitting back in her chair now, drawing the paper serenely to and
fro between her fingers; and he could see the firelight on her chin and
brows, and those steady eyes watching him. He had an impulse of
confidence.

“I do think changes are coming,” he said. “I suppose we all do.”

“And you approve?”

“Oh! how can I say off-hand?--But I think changes are needed.”

She was looking down at the fire again now, and did not speak for a
moment.

“Master More said you were of the new school,” she said meditatively.

Ralph felt a curious thrill of exultation. Margaret was right then; this
girl had been thinking about him.

“There is certainly a stirring,” he said; and his voice was a little
restrained.

“Oh, I am not blind or deaf,” said the girl. “Of course, there is a
stirring--but I wondered--”

Then Margaret came in with the candles.

Ralph went away that evening more excited than he liked. It seemed as if
Mistress Roper’s words had set light to a fire ready laid, and he could
perceive the warmth beginning to move about his heart and odd wavering
lights flickering on his circumstances and business that had not been
there before.

       *       *       *       *       *

He received his first letter from Beatrice a few weeks later, and it
threw him into a strait between his personal and official claims.

Cromwell at this time was exceedingly occupied with quelling the ardour
of the House of Lords, who were requesting that the Holy Maid of Kent
and her companions might have an opportunity of defending themselves
before the Act of Attainder ordered by the King was passed against them;
but he found time to tell his agent that trouble was impending over More
and Fisher; and to request him to hand in any evidence that he might
have against the former.

“I suppose we shall have to let the Bishop off with a fine,” said the
minister, “in regard to the Maid’s affair; but we shall catch him
presently over the Act; and Mr. More is clear of it. But we shall have
him too in a few days. Put down what you have to say, Mr. Torridon, and
let me have it this evening.”

And then he rustled off down the staircase to where his carriage was
waiting to take him to Westminster, where he proposed to tell the
scrupulous peers that the King was not accustomed to command twice, and
that to suspect his Grace of wishing them to do an injustice was a piece
of insolence that neither himself nor his royal master had expected of
them.

Ralph was actually engaged in putting down his very scanty accusations
against Sir Thomas More when the letter from Beatrice was brought up to
him. He read it through twice in silence; and then ordered the courier
to wait below. When the servant had left the room, he read it through a
third time.

It was not long; but it was pregnant.

“I entreat you, sir,” wrote the girl, “for the love of Jesu, to let us
know if anything is designed against our friend. Three weeks ago you
told me it was not so; I pray God that may be true still. I know that
you would not lift a finger against him yourself--” (Ralph glanced at
his own neat little list at these words, and bit his pen)--“but I wish
you to do what you can for him and for us all.” Then followed an
erasure.

Ralph carried the paper to the window, flattened it against the panes
and read clearly the words, “If my” under the scratching lines, and
smiled to himself as he guessed what the sentence was that she was
beginning.

Then the letter continued.

“I hear on good authority that there is something against him. He will
not escape; and will do nothing on such hearsay, but only tells us to
trust God, and laughs at us all. Good Mr. Torridon, do what you can.
Your loving friend, B.A.”

Ralph went back from the window where he was still standing, and sat
down again, bending his head into his hands. He had no sort of scruples
against lying as such or betraying Mr. More’s private conversation; his
whole training was directed against such foolishness, and he had learnt
at last from Cromwell’s incessant precept and example that the good of
the State over-rode all private interests. But he had a disinclination
to lie to Beatrice; and he felt simply unable to lose her friendship by
telling her the truth.

As he sat there perfectly still, the servant peeped in once softly to
see if the answer was ready, and noiselessly withdrew. Ralph did not
stir; but still sat on, pressing his eyeballs till they ached and fiery
rings twisted before him in the darkness. Then he abruptly sat up,
blinked a moment or two, took up a pen, bit it again, and laid it down
and sat eyeing the two papers that lay side by side on his desk.

He took up his own list, and read it through. After all, it was very
insignificant, and contained no more than minute scraps of conversation
that Sir Thomas More had let drop. He had called Queen Katharine “poor
woman” three or four times; had expressed a reverence for the Pope of
Rome half a dozen times, and had once called him the Vicar of Christ. He
had been silent when someone had mentioned Anne Boleyn’s name; he had
praised the Carthusians and the Religious Life generally, at some
length.

They were the kind of remarks that might mean nothing or a great deal;
they were consistent with loyalty; they were not inconsistent with
treason; in fact they were exactly the kind of material out of which
serious accusations might be manufactured by a skilled hand, though as
they stood they proved nothing.

A further consideration to Ralph was his duty to Cromwell; he scarcely
felt it seemly to lie whole-heartedly to him; and on the other hand he
felt now simply unable to lie to Beatrice. There was only one way out of
it,--to prevaricate to them both.

He took up his own paper, glanced at it once more; and then with a
slightly dramatic gesture tore it across and across, and threw it on the
ground. Then he took up his pen and wrote to Beatrice.

“I have only had access to one paper against our friend--that I have
destroyed, though I do not know what Master Cromwell will say. But I
tell you this to show at what a price I value your friendship.

“Of course our friend is threatened. Who is not in these days? But I
swear to you that I do not know what is the design.”

He added a word or two more for politeness’ sake, prayed that “God might
have her in His keeping,” and signed himself as she had done, her
“loving friend.”

Then he dried the ink with his pounce box, sealed the letter with great
care, and took it down to the courier himself.

       *       *       *       *       *

He faced Cromwell in the evening with a good deal of terror, but with
great adroitness; swore positively that More had said nothing actually
treasonable, and had found, on putting pen to paper, that the
accusations were flimsier than he thought.

“But it is your business to see that they be not so,” stormed his
master. Ralph paused a moment respectfully.

“I cannot make a purse out of a sow’s ear, sir. I must have at least
some sort of silk.”

When Cromwell had ceased to walk up and down, Ralph pointed out with
considerable shrewdness that he did not suppose that his evidence was
going to form the main ground of the attack on More; and that it would
merely weaken the position to bring such feeble arguments to bear.

“Why he would tear them to shreds, sir, in five minutes; he would make
out that they were our principal grounds--he is a skilled lawyer. If I
may dare to say so, Master Cromwell, let your words against Mr. More be
few and choice.”

This was bolder speaking than he had ever ventured on before; but
Cromwell was in a good humour. The peers had proved tractable and had
agreed to pass the attainder against Elizabeth Barton without any more
talk of justice and the accused’s right of defence; and he looked now at
Ralph with a grim approval.

“I believe you are right, Mr. Torridon. I will think over it.”

A week later the blow fell.

       *       *       *       *       *

Cromwell looked up at him one Sunday evening as he came into the room,
with his papers, and without any greeting spoke at once.

“I wish you to go to Lambeth House to-morrow morning early, Mr.
Torridon. Master More is to be there to have the Oath of Succession
tendered to him with the others. Do your best to persuade him to take
it; be his true friend.”

A little grim amusement shone in his eyes as he spoke. Ralph looked at
him a moment.

“I mean it, Mr. Torridon: do your best. I wish him to think you his
friend.”

       *       *       *       *       *

As Ralph went across the Thames in a wherry the following morning, he
was still thinking out the situation. Apparently Cromwell wished to keep
in friendly touch with More; and this now, of course, was only possible
through Ralph, and would have been impossible if the latter’s evidence
had been used, or were going to be used. It was a relief to him to know
that the consummation of his treachery was postponed at least for the
present; (but he would not have called it treachery).

As Lambeth towers began to loom ahead, Ralph took out Beatrice’s letter
that had come in answer to his own a few days before, and ran his eyes
over it. It was a line of passionate thanks and blessing. Surely he had
reached her hidden heart at last. He put the letter back in his inner
pocket, just before he stepped ashore. It no doubt would be a useful
evidence of his own sincerity in his interview with More.

There was a great crowd in the court as he passed through, for many were
being called to take the oath, which, however, was not made strictly
legal until the following Second Act in the autumn. Several carriages
were drawn up near the house door, and among them Ralph recognised the
liveries of his master and of Lord Chancellor Audley. A number of horses
and mules too were tethered to rings in the wall on the other side with
grooms beside them, and ecclesiastics and secretaries were coming and
going, disputing in groups, calling to one another, in the pleasant
April sunshine.

On enquiry he found that the Commissioners were sitting in one of the
downstair parlours; but one of Cromwell’s servants at the door told him
that he was not to go in there, but that Mr. More was upstairs by
himself, and that if he pleased he would show him the way.

It was an old room looking on to the garden, scantily furnished, with a
patch of carpet by the window and a table and chair set upon it. More
turned round from the window-seat on which he was kneeling to look out,
and smiled genially as Ralph heard the servant close the door.

“Why, Mr. Torridon, are you in trouble too? This is the detention-room
whither I am sent to consider myself.”

He led Ralph, still holding his hand, to the window-seat, where he
leaned again looking eagerly into the garden.

“There go the good boys,” he said, “to and fro in the playground; and
here sit I. I suppose I have nothing but the rod to look for.”

Ralph felt a little awkward in the presence of this gaiety; and for a
minute or two leaned out beside More, staring mechanically at the
figures that passed up and down. He had expected almost to find him at
his prayers, or at least thoughtfully considering himself.

More commented agreeably on the passers-by.

“Dr. Wilson was here a moment ago; but he is off now, with a man on
either side. He too is a naughty fellow like myself, and will not listen
to reason. There is the Vicar of Croydon, good man, coming out of the
buttery wiping his mouth.”

Ralph looked down at the priest’s flushed excited face; he was talking
with a kind of reckless gaiety to a friend who walked beside him.

“He was sad enough just now,” went on the other, “while he was still
obstinate; but his master hath patted him on the head now and given him
cake and wine. He was calling out for a drink just now (which he hath
got, I see) either for gladness or for dryness, or else that we might
know _quod ille notus erat pontifici_.”

Dr. Latimer passed presently, his arms on either side flung round a
priest’s neck; he too was talking volubly and laughing; and the skirts
of his habit wagged behind him.

“He is in high feather,” said More, “and I have no doubt that his
conscience is as clear as his eyes. Come, Mr. Torridon; sit you down.
What have you come for?”

Ralph sat back on the window-seat with his back to the light, and his
hat between his knees.

“I came to see you, sir; I have not been to the Commissioners. I heard
you were here.”

“Why, yes,” said More, “here I am.”

“I came to see if I could be of any use to you, Master More; I know a
friend’s face is a good councillor sometimes, even though that friend be
a fool.”

More patted him softly on the knee.

“No fool,” he said, “far from it.”

He looked at him so oddly that Ralph feared that he suspected him; so he
made haste to bring out Beatrice’s letter.

“Mistress Atherton has written me this,” he said. “I was able to do her
a little service--at least I thought it so then.”

More took the letter and glanced at it.

“A very pretty letter,” he said, “and why do you show it me?”

Ralph looked at him steadily.

“Because I am Master Cromwell’s servant; and you never forget it.”

More burst into a fit of laughter; and then took Ralph kindly by the
hand.

“You are either very innocent or very deep,” he said. “And what have you
come to ask me?”

“I have come to ask nothing, Master More,” said Ralph indignantly,
withdrawing his hand--“except to be of service to you.”

“To talk about the oath,” corrected the other placidly. “Very well then.
Do you begin, Mr. Torridon.”

Ralph made a great effort, for he was sorely perplexed by Sir Thomas’
attitude, and began to talk, putting all the reasons forward that he
could think of for the accepting of the oath. He pointed out that
government and allegiance would be impossible things if every man had to
examine for himself the claims of his rulers; when vexed and elaborate
questions arose--and this certainly was one such--was it not safer to
follow the decrees of the King and Parliament, rather than to take up a
position of private judgment, and decide upon details of which a subject
could have no knowledge? How, too, could More, under the circumstances,
take upon himself to condemn those who had subscribed the oath?--he
named a few eminent prelates, the Abbot of Westminster and others.

“I do not condemn them,” put in More, who was looking interested.

“Then you are uncertain of the matter?” went on Ralph who had thought
out his line of argument with some care.

More assented.

“But your duty to the King’s grace is certain; therefore it should
outweigh a thing that is doubtful.”

Sir Thomas sucked in his lower lip, and stared gravely on the young
man.

“You are very shrewd, sir,” he said. “I do not know how to answer that
at this moment; but I have no reasonable doubt but that there is an
answer.”

Ralph was delighted with his advantage, and pursued it eagerly; and
after a few minutes had won from More an acknowledgment that he might be
willing to consider the taking of the oath itself; it was the other
clauses that touched his conscience more. He could swear to be loyal to
Anne’s children; but he could not assent to the denunciation of the Pope
contained in the preamble of the Act, and the oath would commit him to
that.

“But you will tell that to the Commissioners, sir?” asked Ralph eagerly.

“I will tell them all that I have told you,” said More smiling.

Ralph himself was somewhat doubtful as to whether the concession would
be accepted; but he professed great confidence, and secretly
congratulated himself with having made so much way. But presently a
remark of More’s showed that he appreciated the situation.

“I am very grateful to you, Mr. Torridon, for coming and talking to me;
and I shall tell my wife and children so. But it is of no use. They are
resolved to catch me. First there was the bribe; then the matter of the
Maid; then this; and if I took a hundred oaths they would find one more
that I could not, without losing my soul; and that indeed I do not
propose to do. _Quid enim proficit homo?_”

There was a knock at the door a moment later, and a servant came in to
beg Mr. More to come downstairs again; the Commissioners were ready for
him.

“Then good-day, Mr. Torridon. You will come and see me sometimes, even
if not at Chelsea. Wherever I may be it will be as nigh heaven as
Chelsea.”

Ralph went down with him, and parted from him at the door of the
Commissioner’s room; and half-an-hour later a message was sent out to
him by Cromwell that he need wait no longer; Mr. More had refused the
oath, and had been handed over to the custody of the Abbot of
Westminster.




CHAPTER VII

A MERRY PRISONER


The arrest of Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher and their committal to
the Tower a few days later caused nothing less than consternation in
England and of furious indignation on the Continent. It was evident that
greatness would save no man; the best hope lay in obscurity, and men who
had been loud in self-assertion now grew timorous and silent.

Ralph was now in the thick of events. Besides his connection with More,
he had been present at one of the examinations of the Maid of Kent and
her admirers; had formed one of the congregation at Paul’s Cross when
the confession drawn up for her had been read aloud in her name by Dr.
Capon, who from the pulpit opposite the platform where the penitents
were set, preached a vigorous sermon against credulity and superstition.
Ralph had read the confession over a couple of days before in Cromwell’s
room, and had suggested a few verbal alterations; and he had been
finally present, a few days after More’s arrest, at the last scene of
the drama, when Elizabeth Barton, with six priests, suffered, under the
provisions of an act of attainder, on Tyburn gallows.

All these events were indications of the course that things were taking
in regard to greater matters. Parliament had now advanced further than
ever in the direction of a breach with Rome, and had transferred the
power of nomination to bishoprics from the Holy See to the Crown, and,
what was at least as significant, had dealt in a similar manner with the
authority over Religious houses.

On the other side, Rome had declared definitely against the annulling of
Queen Katharine’s marriage, and to this the King had retorted by turning
the pulpits against the Pope, and in the course of this had found
himself compelled to deal sharply with the Franciscans, who were at the
same time the most popular and the most papal of all preachers. In the
following out of this policy, first several notable friars were
imprisoned, and next a couple of subservient Religious, a Dominican and
an Augustinian, were appointed grand visitors of the rebellious Order.

A cloud of terror now began to brood over the Religious houses in
England, as the news of these proceedings became known, and Ralph had a
piteous letter from his father, entreating him to give some explanation
of the course of affairs so far as was compatible with loyalty to his
master, and at least his advice as to Christopher’s profession.

“We hear sad tales, dear son,” wrote Sir James, “on all sides are fears,
and no man knows what the end will be. Some even say that the Orders
will be reduced in number. And who knows what may be toward now that the
Bishop and Mr. More are in trouble. I know not what is all this that
Parliament has been doing about the Holy Father his authority; but I am
sure that it cannot be more than what other reigns have brought about in
declaring that the Prince is temporal lord of his land. But, however
that may be, what do you advise that your brother should do? He is to be
professed in August, unless it is prevented, and I dare not put out my
hand to hinder it, until I know more. I do not ask you, dear son, to
tell me what you should not; I know my duty and yours too well for that.
But I entreat you to tell me what you can, that I may not consent to
your brother’s profession if it is better that it should not take place
until affairs are quieter. Your mother would send you her dear love, I
know, if she knew I were writing, but she is in her chamber, and the
messenger must go with this. Jesu have you in His blessed keeping!”

Ralph wrote back that he knew no reason against Christopher’s
profession, except what might arise from the exposure of the Holy Maid
on whose advice he had gone to Lewes, and that if his father and brother
were satisfied on that score, he hoped that Christopher would follow
God’s leading.

At the same time that he wrote this he was engaged, under Cromwell’s
directions, in sifting the evidence offered by the grand visitors to
show that the friars refused to accept the new enactments on the subject
of the papal jurisdiction.

       *       *       *       *       *

On the other hand, the Carthusians in London had proved more submissive.
There had been a struggle at first when the oath of the succession had
been tendered to them, and Prior Houghton, with the Procurator, Humphrey
Middlemore, had been committed to the Tower. The oath affirmed the
nullity of Queen Katharine’s marriage with the King on the alleged
ground of her consummated marriage with Henry’s elder brother, and
involved, though the Carthusians did not clearly understand it so at the
time, a rejection of the Pope’s authority as connected with the
dispensation for Katharine’s union with Henry. In May their scruples
were removed by the efforts of some who had influence with them, and the
whole community took the oath as required of them, though with the
pathetic addition of a clause that they only submitted “so far as it
was lawful for them so to do.” This actual submission, to Cromwell’s
mind and therefore to Ralph’s, was at first of more significance than
was the uneasy temper of the community, as reported to them, which
followed their compliance; but as the autumn drew on this opinion was
modified.

It was in connection with this that Ralph became aware for the first
time of what was finally impending with regard to the King’s supremacy
over the Church.

He had been sitting in Cromwell’s room in the Chancery all through one
morning, working at the evidence that was flowing in from all sides of
disaffection to Henry’s policy, sifting out worthless and frivolous
charges from serious ones. Every day a flood of such testimony poured in
from the spies in all parts of the country, relating to the deepening
dissatisfaction with the method of government; and Cromwell, as the
King’s adviser, came in for much abuse. Every kind of manifestation of
this was reported, the talk in the ale-houses and at gentlemen’s tables
alike, words dropped in the hunting-field or over a game of cards; and
the offenders were dealt with in various ways, some by a sharp rebuke or
warning, others by a sudden visit of a pursuivant and his men.

Ralph made his report as usual at the end of the morning, and was on the
point of leaving, when his master called him back from the door.

“A moment,” he said, “I have something to say. Sit down.”

When Ralph had taken the chair again that he had just left, Cromwell
took up a pen, and began to play with it delicately as he talked.

“You will have noticed,” he began, “how hot the feeling runs in the
country, and I am sure you will also have understood why it is so. It
is not so much what has happened,--I mean in the matter of the marriage
and of the friars,--but what folk fear is going to happen. It seems to
the people that security is disappearing; they do not understand that
their best security lies in obedience. And, above all, they think that
matters are dangerous with regard to the Church. They know now that the
Pope has spoken, and that the King pays no heed, but, on the other hand,
waxes more bold. And that because his conscience bids him. Remember
that, sir, when you have to do with his Highness.”

He glanced at Ralph again, but there was no mockery in his solemn eyes.
Then he went on.

“I am going to tell you, Mr. Torridon, that these folks are partly
right, and that his Grace has not yet done all that he intends. There is
yet one more step to take--and that is to declare the King supreme over
the Church of England.”

Ralph felt those strong eyes bent upon him, and he nodded, making no
sign of approval or otherwise.

“This is no new thing, Mr. Torridon,” went on Cromwell, after a moment’s
silence. “The King of England has always been supreme, though I will
acknowledge that this has become obscured of late. But it is time that
it be re-affirmed. The Popes have waxed presumptuous, and have laid
claim to titles that Christ never gave them, and it is time that they be
reminded that England is free, and will not suffer their domination. As
for the unity of the Catholic Church, that can be attended to later on,
and on firmer ground; when the Pope has been taught not to wax so proud.
There will be an Act passed by Parliament presently, perhaps next year,
to do this business, and then we shall know better what to do. Until
that, it is very necessary, as you have already seen, to keep the folks
quiet, and not to suffer any contradiction of his Grace’s rights. Do you
understand me, Mr. Torridon?”

Cromwell laid the pen clown and leaned back in his chair, with his
fingers together.

“I understand, sir,” said Ralph, in a perfectly even tone.

“Well, that is all that I have to say,” ended his master, still watching
him. “I need not tell you how necessary secrecy is in the matter.”

Ralph was considerably startled as he went home, and realized better
what it was that he had heard. While prudent persons were already
trembling at the King’s effrontery and daring in the past, Henry was
meditating a yet further step. He began to see now that the instinct of
the country was, as always, sharper than that of the individual, and
that these uneasy strivings everywhere rose from a very definite
perception of danger. The idea of the King’s supremacy, as represented
by Cromwell, would not seem to be a very startling departure; similar
protests of freedom had been made in previous reigns, but now, following
as it did upon overt acts of disobedience to the Sovereign Pontiff, and
of disregard of his authority in matters of church-law and even of the
status of Religious houses, it seemed to have a significance that
previous protests had lacked.

And behind it all was the King’s conscience! This was a new thought to
Ralph, but the more he considered it the more it convinced him. It was a
curious conscience, but a mighty one, and it was backed by an
indomitable will. For the first time there opened out to Ralph’s mind a
glimpse of the possibility that he had scarcely dreamed of hitherto--of
a Nationalism in Church affairs that was a reality rather than a
theory--in which the Bishop of Rome while yet the foremost bishop of
Christendom and endowed with special prerogatives, yet should have no
finger in national affairs, which should be settled by the home
authorities without reference to him. No doubt, he told himself, a
readjustment was needed--visions and fancies had encrusted themselves so
quickly round the religion credible by a practical man that a scouring
was called for. How if this should be the method by which not only such
accretions should be done away, but yet more practical matters should be
arranged, and steps taken to amend the unwarranted interferences and
pecuniary demands of this foreign bishop?

He had had more than one interview with Sir Thomas More in the Tower,
and once was able to take him news of his own household at Chelsea. For
a month none of his own people, except his servant, was allowed to visit
him, and Ralph, calling on him about three weeks after the beginning of
his imprisonment, found him eager for news.

He was in a sufficiently pleasant cell in the Beauchamp Tower, furnished
with straw mats underfoot, and straw hangings in place of a wainscot;
his bed stood in one corner, with his crucifix and beads on a little
table beside it, and his narrow window looked out through eleven feet of
wall towards the Court and the White Tower. His books, too, which his
servant, John Wood, had brought from Chelsea, and which had not yet been
taken from him, stood about the room, and several lay on the table among
his papers, at which he was writing when Ralph was admitted by the
warder.

“I am very glad to see you, Mr. Torridon,” he said, “I knew you would
not forget an old friend, even though he could not take your counsel. I
daresay you have come to give it me again, however.”

“If I thought you would take it,” began Ralph.

“But I will not,” said More smiling, “no more than before. Sit down, Mr.
Torridon.”

Ralph had come at Cromwell’s suggestion, and with a very great
willingness of his own, too. He knew he could not please Beatrice more
than by visiting her friend, and he himself was pleased and amused to
think that he could serve his master’s interests from one side and his
own from another by one action.

He talked a little about the oath again, and mentioned how many had
taken it during the last week or two.

“I am pleased that they can do it with a good conscience,” observed
More. “And now let us talk of other matters. If I would not do it for my
daughter’s sake, who begged me, I would not do it for the sake of both
the Houses of Parliament, nor even, dear Mr. Torridon, for yours and
Master Cromwell’s.”

Ralph saw that it was of no use, and began to speak of other things. He
gave him news of Chelsea.

“They are not very merry there,” he said, “and I hardly suppose you
would wish them to be.”

“Why not?” cried More, with a beaming face, “I am merry enough. I would
not be a monk; so God hath compelled me to be one, and treats me as one
of His own spoilt children. He setteth me on His lap and dandleth me. I
have never been so happy.”

He told Ralph presently that his chief sorrow was that he could not go
to mass or receive the sacraments. The Lieutenant, Sir Edward
Walsingham, who had been his friend, had told him that he would very
gladly have given him liberties of this kind, but that he dared not, for
fear of the King’s displeasure.

“But I told him,” said More, “not to trouble himself that I liked his
cheer well enough as it was, and if ever I did not he was to put me out
of his doors.”

After a little more talk he showed Ralph what he was writing. It was a
treatise called a “Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation.”

“It is to persuade myself,” he said, “that I am no more a prisoner than
I was before; I know I am, but sometimes forget it. We are all God’s
prisoners.”

Ralph glanced down the page just written and was astonished at its good
humour.

“Some prisoner of another gaol,” he read, “singeth, danceth in his two
fetters, and feareth not his feet for stumbling at a stone; while God’s
prisoner, that hath but his one foot fettered by the gout, lieth
groaning on a couch, and quaketh and crieth out if he fear there would
fall on his foot no more than a cushion.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Ralph went straight up the river from the Tower to Chelsea to take them
news of the prisoner, and was silent and moody as he went. He had been
half touched and half enraged by More’s bearing--touched by his
simplicity and cheerfulness and enraged by his confidence in a bad
cause.

Mrs. Alice More behaved as usual when he got there: she had a genius for
the obvious; commented on the weariness of living in one room, the
distress at the thought that one was fastened in at the will of another;
deplored the plainness of the prison fare, and the folly of her husband
in refusing an oath that she herself and her children and the vast
majority of the prominent persons in England had found so simple in
accepting. She left nothing unsaid.

Finally, she apologized for the plainness of her dress.

“You must think me a slattern, Mr. Torridon, but I cannot help it. I
have not the heart nor the means, now that my man is in prison, to do
better.”

And her solemn eyes filled with tears.

When he had given the news to the family he went aside from the group in
the garden to where Beatrice Atherton was sitting below the Jesu tree,
with work on her lap.

He had noticed as he talked that she was sitting there, and had raised
his voice for her benefit. He fancied, and with a pleasure at the
delicate instinct, that she did not wish to appear as intimately
interested in the news from the Tower as those who had a better right to
be. He was always detecting now faint shades in her character, as he
knew her better, that charmed and delighted him.

She was doing some mending, and only glanced up and down again without
ceasing or moving, as Ralph stood by her.

“I thought you never used the needle,” he began in a moment.

“It is never too late to mend,” she said, without the faintest movement.

Ralph felt again an odd prick of happiness. It gave him a distinct
thrill of delight that she would make such an answer and so swiftly; and
at such a time, when tragedy was round her and in her heart, for he knew
how much she loved the man from whom he had just come.

He sat down on the garden chair opposite, and watched her fingers and
the movements of her wrist as she passed the needle in and out, and
neither spoke again till the others had dispersed.

“You heard all I said?” said Ralph at last.

She bowed her head without answering.

“Shall I go and bring you news again presently?”

“If you please,” she said.

“I hope to be able to do some little things for him,” went on Ralph,
dropping his eyes, and he was conscious that she momentarily looked up.

--“But I am afraid there is not much. I shall speak for him to Master
Cromwell and the Lieutenant.”

The needle paused and then went on again.

Ralph was conscious of an extraordinary momentousness in every word that
he said. He was well aware that this girl was not to be wooed by
violence, but that he must insinuate his mind and sympathies delicately
with hers, watching for every movement and ripple of thought. He had
known ever since his talk with Margaret Roper that Beatrice was, as it
were, turned towards him and scrutinising him, and that any mistake on
his part, however slight, might finally alienate her. Even his gestures,
the tones of his voice, his manner of walking, were important elements.
He knew now that he was the kind of person who might be acceptable to
her--or rather that his personality contained one facet that pleased
her, and that he must be careful now to keep that facet turned towards
her continually at such an angle that she caught the flash. He had
sufficient sense, not to act a part, for that, he knew, she would soon
discover, but to be natural in his best way, and to use the fine
instincts that he was aware of possessing to tell him exactly how she
would wish him to express himself. It would be a long time yet, he
recognised, before he could attain his final object; in fact he was not
perfectly certain what he wanted; but meanwhile he availed himself of
every possible opportunity to get nearer, and was content with his
progress.

He was sorely tempted now to discuss Sir Thomas’s position and to
describe his own, but he perceived from her own aloofness just now that
it would seem a profanity, so he preserved silence instead, knowing that
it would be eloquent to her. At last she spoke again, and there was a
suggestion of a tremor in her voice.

“I suppose you can do nothing for him really? He must stay in the
Tower?”

Ralph threw out his hands, silently, expostulating.

“Nothing?” she said again, bending over her work.

Ralph stood up, looking down at her, but made no answer.

“I--I would do anything,” she said deliberately, “anything, I think, for
the man--” and then broke off abruptly.

       *       *       *       *       *

Ralph went away from Chelsea that afternoon with a whirling head and
dancing heart. She had said no more than that, but he knew what she had
meant, and knew, too that she would not have said as much to anyone to
whom she was indifferent. Of course, it was hopeless to think of
bringing about More’s release, but he could at least pretend to try, and
Ralph was aware that to chivalrous souls a pathetic failure often
appeals more than an excellent success.

Folks turned to look after him more than once as he strode home.




CHAPTER VIII

A HIGHER STEP


As Chris, on the eve of his profession, looked back over the year that
had passed since his reception at the guest-house, he scarcely knew
whether it seemed like a week or a century. At times it appeared as if
the old life in the world were a kind of far-away picture in which he
saw himself as one detached from his present personality, moving among
curious scenes in which now he had no part; at other times the familiar
past rushed on him fiercely, deafened him with its appeal, and claimed
him as its own. In such moods the monastery was an intolerable prison,
the day’s round an empty heart-breaking formality in which his soul was
being stifled, and even his habit, which he had once touched so
reverently, the badge of a fool.

The life of the world at such times seemed to him the only sanity; these
men used the powers that God had given them, were content with simple
and unostentatious doings and interests, reached the higher vocation by
their very naiveté, and did not seek to fly on wings that were not meant
to bear them. How sensible, Christopher told himself, was Ralph’s ideal!
God had made the world, so Ralph lived in it--a world in which great and
small affairs were carried on, and in which he interested himself. God
had made horses and hawks, had provided materials for carriages and fine
clothes and cross-bows, had formed the sexes and allowed for love and
domestic matters, had created brains with their capacities of passion
and intellect; and so Ralph had taken these things as he found them,
hunted, dressed, lived, managed and mixed with men. At times in his cell
Chris saw that imposing figure in all its quiet bravery of dress, that
sane, clever face, those pitying and contemptuous eyes looking at him,
and heard the well-bred voice asking and commenting and wondering at the
misguided zeal of a brother who could give all this up, and seek to live
a life that was built on and sustained by illusions.

One event during his first six months of the novitiate helped to
solemnise him and to clear the confusion.

Old Dom Augustine was taken sick and died, and Chris for the first time
in his life watched the melting tragedy of death. The old monk had been
moved from the dormitory to the sick-room when the end seemed imminent,
and one afternoon Chris noticed the little table set outside the door,
with its candles and crucifix, the basin of cotton-wool, and the other
signs that the last sacraments were to be administered. He knew little
of the old man, except his bleared face and shaking hands as he had
seen them in choir, and had never been greatly impressed by him; but it
was another matter when in the evening of the same day, at his master’s
order he passed into the cell and knelt down with the others to see the
end.

The old monk was lying now on the cross of ashes that had been spread on
the floor; his features looked pinched and white in the candlelight; his
old mouth moved incessantly, and opened now and again to gasp; but there
was an august dignity on his face that Chris had never seen there
before.

Outside the night was still and frosty; only now and again the heavy
stroke of the bell told the town that a soul was passing.

Dom Augustine had received Viaticum an hour before. Chris had heard the
steady tinkle of the bell, like the sound of Aaron’s garments, as the
priest who had brought him Communion passed back with his sacred burden,
and Chris had fallen on his knees where he stood as he caught a glimpse
of the white procession passing back to the church, their frosty breath
going up together in the winter night air, the wheeling shadows, and the
glare of the torches giving a pleasant warm light in the dull cloister.

But all that was over now, and the end was at hand.

As Chris knelt there, mechanically responding to the prayers on which
the monk’s soul was beginning to lift itself and flutter for escape,
there fell a great solemnity on his spirit. The thought, as old as
death, made itself real to him, that this was the end of every man and
of himself too. Where Dom Augustine lay, he would lie, with his past
behind him, of which every detail would be instinct with eternal import.
All the tiny things of the monastic life--the rising in time for the
night office, attention during it, the responses to grace, the little
movements prescribed by etiquette, the invisible motions of a soul that
had or had not acted for the love of God, those stirrings, falls,
aspirations, that incessant activity of eighty years--all so incredibly
minute from one point of view, so incredibly weighty from another--the
account of all those things was to be handed in now, and an eternal
judgment given.

He looked at the wearied, pained old face again, at the tight-shut eyes,
the jerking movements of the unshaven lips, and wondered what was
passing behind;--what strange colloquy of the soul with itself or its
Master or great personages of the Court of Heaven. And all was set in
this little bare setting of white walls, a tumbled bed, a shuttered
window, a guttering candle or two, a cross of ashes on boards, a ring
of faces, and a murmur of prayers!

The solemnity rose and fell in Chris’s soul like a deep organ-note
sounding and waning. How homely and tender were these last rites, this
accompaniment of the departing soul to the edge of eternity with all
that was dear and familiar to it--the drops of holy water, the mellow
light of candles, and the sonorous soothing Latin! And yet--and yet--how
powerless to save a soul that had not troubled to make the necessary
efforts during life, and had lost the power of making them now!

       *       *       *       *       *

When all was over he went out of the cell with an indescribable gravity
at his heart.

       *       *       *       *       *

When the great events in the spring of ’34 began to take place, Chris
was in a period of abstracted peace, and the rumours of them came to him
as cries from another planet.

Dom Anthony Marks came into the cloister one day from the guest-house
with a great excitement in his face.

“Here is news!” he said, joining himself to Chris and another young monk
with whom the lonely novice was sometimes allowed to walk. “Master
Humphreys, from London, tells me they are all in a ferment there.”

Chris looked at him with a deferential coldness, and waited for more.

“They say that Master More hath refused the oath, and that he is lodged
in the Tower, and my Lord of Rochester too.”

The young monk burst into exclamations and questions, but Chris was
silent. It was sad enough, but what did it matter to him? What did it
really matter to anyone? God was King.

Dom Anthony was in a hurry, and scuffled off presently to tell the
Prior, and in an hour or two there was an air of excitement through the
house. Chris, however, heard nothing more except the little that the
novice-master chose to tell him, and felt a certain contempt for the
anxious-eyed monks who broke the silence by whispers behind doors, and
the peace of the monastery by their perturbed looks.

       *       *       *       *       *

Even when a little later in the summer the commissioner came down to
tender the oath of succession Chris heard little and cared less. He was
aware of a fine gentleman striding through the cloister, lolling in the
garth, and occupying a prominent seat in the church; he noticed that his
master was long in coming to him after the protracted chapter-meetings,
but it appeared to him all rather an irrelevant matter. These things
were surely quite apart from the business for which they were all
gathered in the house--the _opus Dei_ and the salvation of souls; this
or that legal document did not seriously affect such high matters.

The novice-master told him presently that the community had signed the
oath, as all others were doing, and that there was no need for anxiety:
they were in the hands of their Religious Superiors.

“I was not anxious,” said Chris abruptly, and Dom James hastened to snub
him, and to tell him that he ought to have been, but that novices always
thought they knew everything, and were the chief troubles that Religious
houses had to put up with.

Chris courteously begged pardon, and went to his lessons wondering what
in the world all the pother was about.

But such moods of detachment were not continuous; they visited him for
weeks at a time, when his soul was full of consolation, and he was
amazed that any other life seemed possible to anyone. He seemed to
himself to have reached the very heart and secret of existence--surely
it was plain enough; God and eternity were the only things worth
considering; a life passed in an ecstasy, if such were possible, was
surely more consonant with reality than one of ordinary activities.
Activities were, after all, but concessions to human weakness and desire
for variety; contemplation was the simple and natural attitude of a soul
that knew herself and God.

But he was a man as well as a novice, and when these moods ebbed from
his soul they left him strangely bitter and dry: the clouds would
gather; the wind of discontent would begin to shrill about the angles of
his spirit, and presently the storm of desolation would be up.

He had one such tempestuous mood immediately before his profession.

During its stress he had received a letter from his father which he was
allowed to read, in which Sir James half hinted at the advisability of
postponing the irrevocable step until things were quieter, and his heart
had leaped at the possibility of escape. He did not know till then how
strong had grown the motive of appearing well in the eyes of his
relatives and of fearing to lose their respect by drawing back; and now
that his father, too, seemed to suggest that he had better re-consider
himself, it appeared that a door was opened in the high monastery wall
through which he might go through and take his honour with him.

He passed through a terrible struggle that night.

Never had the night-office seemed so wearisomely barren. The glamour
that had lighted those dark walls and the double row of cowls and
down-bent faces, the mystical beauty of the single flames here and
there that threw patches of light on the carving of the stalls and the
sombre habits, and gave visibility and significance to what without them
was obscure, the strange suggestiveness of the high-groined roof and the
higher vault glimmering through the summer darkness--all this had faded
and left him, as it seemed, sane and perceptive of facts at last. Out
there through those transepts lay the town where reasonable folk slept,
husband and wife together, and the children in the great bed next door,
with the tranquil ordinary day behind them and its fellow before; there
were the streets, still now and dark and empty but for the sleeping
dogs, where the signs swung and the upper stories leaned together, and
where the common life had been transacted since the birth of the town
and would continue till its decay. And beyond lay the cool round hills,
with their dark dewy slopes, over which he had ridden a year ago, and
all England beyond them again, with its human life and affairs and
interests; and over all hung the serene stars whence God looked down
well pleased with all that He had made.

And, meanwhile, here he stood in his stall in his night shoes and black
habit and cropped head, propped on his misericorde, with the great pages
open before him, thumbed and greasy at their corners, from which he was
repeating in a loud monotone formula after formula that had had time to
grow familiar from repetition, but not yet sweet from associations--here
he stood with heavy eyelids after his short sleep, his feet aching and
hot, and his whole soul rebellious.

       *       *       *       *       *

He was sent by his novice-master next day to the Prior, with his
father’s letter in his hand, and stood humbly by the door while the
Prior read it. Chris watched him under half-raised eye-lids; saw the
clean-cut profile with its delicate mouth bent over the paper, and the
hand with the enamelled ring turn the page. Prior Crowham was a
cultivated, well-bred man, not over strong-willed, but courteous and
sympathetic. He turned a little to Chris in his carved chair, as he laid
the letter down.

“Well,” he said, smiling, “it is for you to choose whether you will
offer yourself. Of course, there is uneasiness abroad, as this letter
says, but what then?”

He smiled pleasantly at the young man, and Chris felt a little ashamed.
There was silence for a moment.

“It is for you to choose,” said the Prior again, “you have been happy
with us, I think?”

Chris pressed his lips together and looked down.

“Of course Satan will not leave you alone,” went on the monk presently.
“He will suggest many reasons against your profession. If he did not, I
should be afraid that you had no vocation.”

Again he waited for an answer, and again Chris was silent. His soul was
so desolate that he could not trust himself to say all that he felt.

“You must wait a little,” went on the Prior, “recommend yourself to our
Lady and our Patron, and then leave yourself in their hands. You will
know better when you have had a few days. Will you do this, and then
come to me again?”

“Yes, my Lord Prior,” said Chris, and he took up the letter, bowed, and
went out.

       *       *       *       *       *

Within the week relief and knowledge came to him. He had done what the
monk had told him, and it had been followed by a curious sense of relief
at the thought suggested to him that the responsibility of decision did
not rest on him but on his heavenly helpers. And then as he served mass
the answer came.

It was in the chapel of the Blessed Virgin, a little building entered
from the north transept, with its windows opening directly on to the
road leading up into the town; there was no one there but the two. It
was about seven o’clock on the feast of the Seven Martyrs, and the
chapel was full of a diffused tender morning light, for the chapel was
sheltered from the direct sunshine by the tall church on its south.

As they went up to the altar the bell sounded for the Elevation at the
high-altar of the church, at the _missa familiaris_, and the footstep of
someone passing through the north transept ceased instantly at the
sound. The priest ascended the steps, set down the vessels, spread the
corporal, opened the book, and came down again for the preparation.
There was no one else in the chapel, and the peace of the place in the
summer light, only vitalized by the brisk chirping of a sparrow under
the eaves, entered into Christopher’s soul.

As the mass went on it seemed as if a veil were lifting from his spirit,
and leaving it free and sensible again. The things around him fell into
their proper relationships, and there was no doubt in his mind that this
newly restored significance of theirs was their true interpretation.
They seemed penetrated and suffused by the light of the inner world; the
red-brocaded chasuble moving on a level with his eyes, stirring with the
shifting of the priest’s elbows, was more than a piece of rich stuff,
the white alb beneath more than mere linen, the hood thrown back in the
amice a sacramental thing. He looked up at the smoky yellow flames
against the painted woodwork at the back of the altar, at the
discoloured stones beside the grey window-mouldings still with the
slanting marks of the chisel upon them, at the black rafters overhead,
and last out through the shafted window at the heavy July foliage of the
elm that stood by the road and the brilliant morning sky beyond; and
once more he saw what these things meant and conveyed to an immortal
soul. The words that he had said during these last weeks so mechanically
were now rich and alive again, and as he answered the priest he
perceived the spiritual vibration of them in the inner world of which
his own soul was but a part. And then the climax was reached, and he
lifted the skirt of the vestment with his left hand and shook the bell
in his right; the last shreds of confusion were gone, and his spirit
basked tranquil and content and certain again in the light that was
newly risen on him.

He went to the novice-master after the morning-chapter, and told him
that he had made up his mind to offer himself for profession if it was
thought advisable by the authorities.

       *       *       *       *       *

Towards the end of August he presented himself once more before the
chapter to make his solemn demand; his petition was granted, and a day
appointed for his profession.

Then he withdrew into yet stricter seclusion to prepare for the step.




CHAPTER IX

LIFE AT LEWES


Under the direction of the junior-master who overlooked the young monks
for some years after their profession, Chris continued his work of
illumination, for which he had shown great aptitude during his year of
noviceship.

The art was beginning to disappear, since the introduction of printing
had superseded the need of manuscript, but in some Religious Houses it
was still thought a suitable exercise during the hours appointed for
manual labour.

It was soon after the beg

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