By What Authority? - Robert Hugh Benson (ebook reader for pc txt) 📗

troubled you much, Mistress Isabel."

She hesitated again a moment.

"In my father's room," he went on, "and I will bring the letter."

She nodded and passed into the hall without speaking, and turned to Sir Nicholas' study; while Hubert's steps dashed up the stairs to his mother's room. Isabel went in and stood on the hearth in the firelight that glowed and wavered round the room on the tapestry and the prie-dieu and the table where Hubert had been sitting and the tall shuttered windows, leaning her head against the mantelpiece, doubtful and miserable.

"Listen," said Hubert, bursting into the room a moment later with the sheet open in his hand.

"'Tell Hubert that Lord Arncliffe needs a gentleman to take charge of his estates; he is too old now himself, and has none to help him. I have had the offer for Hubert, and have accepted it; he must go as soon as I have returned. I am sorry to lose the lad, but since James----'" and Hubert broke off. "I must not read that," he said.

Isabel still stood, stretching her hands out to the fire, turned a little away from him.

"But what can I say?" went on the lad passionately, "I must go; and--and God knows for how long, five or six years maybe; and I shall come back and find you--and find you----" and a sob rose up and silenced him.

"Hubert," she said, turning and looking with a kind of wavering steadiness into his shadowed eyes, and even then noticing the clean-cut features and the smooth curve of his jaw with the firelight on it, "you ought not----"

"I know, I know; I promised my father; but there are some things I cannot bear. Of course I do not want you to promise anything; but I thought that if perhaps you could tell me that you thought--that you thought there would be no one else; and that when I came back----"

"Hubert," she said again, resolutely, "it is impossible: our religions----"

"But I would do anything, I think. Besides, in five years so much may happen. You might become a Catholic--or--or, I might come to see that the Protestant Religion was nearly the same, or as true at least--or--or--so much might happen.--Can you not tell me anything before I go?"

A keen ray of hope had pierced her heart as he spoke; and she scarcely knew what she said.

"But, Hubert, even if I were to say----"

He seized her hands and kissed them again and again.

"Oh! God bless you, Isabel! Now I can go so happily. And I will not speak of it again; you can trust me; it will not be hard for you."

She tried to draw her hands away, but he still held them tightly in his own strong hands, and looked into her face. His eyes were shining.

"Yes, yes, I know you have promised nothing. I hold you to nothing. You are as free as ever to do what you will with me. But,"--and he lifted her hands once more and kissed them, and dropped them; seized his cap and was gone.

Isabel was left alone in a tumult of thought and emotion. He had taken her by storm; she had not guessed how desperately weak she was towards him, until he had come to her like this in a whirlwind of passion and stood trembling and almost crying, with the ruddy firelight on his face, and his eyes burning out of shadow. She felt fascinated still by that mingling of a boy's weakness and sentiment and of a man's fire and purpose; and she sank down on her knees before the hearth and looked wonderingly at her hands which he had kissed so ardently, now transparent and flaming against the light as if with love. Then as she looked at the red heart of the fire the sudden leaping of her heart quieted, and there crept on her a glow of steady desire to lean on the power of this tall young lover of hers; she was so utterly alone without him it seemed as if there were no choice left; he had come and claimed her in virtue of the master-law, and she--how much had she yielded? She had not promised; but she had shown evidently her real heart in those half dozen words; and he had interpreted them for her; and she dared not in honesty repudiate his interpretation. And so she knelt there, clasping and unclasping her hands, in a whirl of delight and trembling; all the bounds of that sober inner life seemed for the moment swept away; she almost began to despise its old coldnesses and limitations. How shadowy after all was the love of God, compared with this burning tide that was bearing her along on its bosom!...

She sank lower and lower into herself among the black draperies, clasping those slender hands tightly across her breast.

Suddenly a great log fell with a crash, the red glow turned into leaping flames; the whole dark room seemed alive with shadows that fled to and fro, and she knelt upright quickly and looked round her, terrified and ashamed.--What was she doing here? Was it so soon then that she was setting aside the will of her father, who trusted and loved her so well, and who lay out there in the chancel vault? Ah! she had no right here in this room--Hubert's room now, with his cap and whip lying across the papers and the estate-book, and his knife and the broken jesses on the seat of the chair beside her. There was his step overhead again. She must be gone before he came back.

There was high excitement on the estate and in the village a week or two later when the rumour of Sir Nicholas' return was established, and the paper had been pinned up to the gatehouse stating, in Lady Maxwell's own handwriting, that he would be back sometime in the week before Advent Sunday. Reminiscences were exchanged of the glorious day when the old knight came of age, over forty years ago; of the sports on the green, of the quintain-tilting for the gentlefolks, and the archery in the meadow behind the church for the vulgar; of the high mass and the dinner that followed it. It was rumoured that Mr. Hubert and Mr. Piers had already selected the ox that was to be roasted whole, and that materials for the bonfire were in process of collection in the woodyard of the home farm.

Sir Nicholas' letters became more and more emphatically underlined and incoherent as the days went on, and Lady Maxwell less and less willing for Isabel to read them; but the girl often found the old lady hastily putting away the thin sheets which she had just taken out to read to herself once again, on which her dear lord had scrawled down his very heart itself, as if his courting of her were all to do again.

It was not until the Saturday morning that the courier rode in through the gatehouse with the news that Sir Nicholas was to be released that day, and would be down if possible before nightfall. All the men on the estate were immediately called in and sent home to dress themselves; and an escort of a dozen grooms and servants led by Hubert and Piers rode out at once on the north road, with torches ready for kindling, to meet the party and bring them home; and all other preparations were set forward at once.

Towards eight o'clock Lady Maxwell was so anxious and restless that Isabel slipped out and went down to the gatehouse to look out for herself if there were any signs of the approach of the party. She went up to one of the little octagonal towers, and looked out towards the green.

It was a clear starlight night, but towards the village all was bathed in the dancing ruddy light of the bonfire. It was burning on a little mound at the upper end of the green, just below where Isabel stood, and a heavy curtain of smoke drifted westwards. As she looked down on it she saw against it the tall black posts of the gigantic jack and the slowly revolving carcass of the ox; and round about the stirring crowd of the village folk, their figures black on this side, luminous on that. She could even make out the cassock and square cap of Mr. Bodder as he moved among his flock. The rows of houses on either side, bright and clear at this end, melted away into darkness at the lower end of the green, where on the right the church tower rose up, blotting out the stars, itself just touched with ruddy light, and on the top of which, like a large star itself, burned the torch of the watcher who was looking out towards the north road. There was a ceaseless hum of noise from the green, pierced by the shrill cries of the children round the glowing mass of the bonfire, but there was no disorder, as the barrels that had been rolled out of the Hall cellars that afternoon still stood untouched beneath the Rectory garden-wall. Isabel contrasted in her mind this pleasant human tumult with the angry roaring she had heard from these same country-folk a few months before, when she had followed Lady Maxwell out to the rescue of the woman who had injured her; and she wondered at these strange souls, who attended a Protestant service, but were so fierce and so genial in their defence and welcome of a Catholic squire.

As she thought, there was a sudden movement of the light on the church tower; it tossed violently up and down, and a moment later the jubilant clangour of the bells broke out. There was a sudden stir in the figures on the green, and a burst of cheering rose. Isabel strained her eyes northwards, but the road took a turn beyond the church and she could see nothing but darkness and low-hung stars and one glimmering window. She turned instinctively to the house behind her, and there was the door flung wide, and she could make out the figures of the two ladies against the brightly lit hall beyond, wrapped like herself, in cloak and hood, for the night was frosty and cold.

As she turned once more she heard the clear rattle of trotting hoofs on the hard road, and a glow began to be visible at the lower dark end of the village. The cheering rose higher, and the bells were all clashing together in melodious discord, as in the angle of the road a group of tossing torches appeared. Then she could make out the horsemen; three riding together, and the others as escort round them. The crowd had poured off the grass on to the road by now, and the horses were coming up between two shouting gesticulating lines which closed after them as they went. Now she could make out the white hair of Sir Nicholas, as he bowed bare-headed right and left; and Hubert's feathered cap, on one side of him, and Mr. Boyd's black hat on the other. They had passed the bonfire now, and were coming up the avenue, the crowds still streaming after them, and the church tower bellowing rough music overhead. Isabel leaned out over the battlements, and saw beneath her the two old ladies waiting just outside the gate by the horse-block; and then she drew back, her eyes full of tears, for she saw Sir Nicholas' face as he caught sight of his wife.

There was a sudden silence as the horses drew up; and the crowds