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

no questions; and I shall set no traps or spies. But I must ask that the priests do not come into this part of the house, nor walk in the garden. Fortunately you have a lawn in the cloister; so that they need not lack fresh air or exercise."

"You need not fear, Hubert," said his mother, "I will not embarrass you. You shall be in no danger."

"I think you need not have said that, mother; I am not usually thought a coward."

Lady Maxwell flushed a little, and began to finger her silver knife.

"However," Hubert went on, "I thought it best to say that. The chapel, you see, is in that wing; and you have that lawn; and--and I do not think I am treating you hardly."

"And is your brother James not to come?" asked his mother.

"I have thought much over that," said Hubert; "and although it is hard to say it, I think he had better not come to my part of the house--at least not when I am here; I must know nothing of it. You must do what you think well when I am away, about him and others too. It is very difficult for me, mother; please do not add to the difficulty."

"You need not fear," said Lady Maxwell steadily; "you shall not be troubled with any Catholics besides ourselves."

"Then that is arranged," said the lad. "And now there is a word more. What have you been doing to Isabel?" And he looked sharply across the table. His mother's eyes met his fearlessly.

"I do not understand you," she said.

"Mother, you must know what I mean. You have seen her continually."

"I have told you, my son, that I do not know."

"Why," burst out Hubert, "she is half a Catholic."

"Thank God," said his mother.

"Ah! yes; you thank God, I know; but whom am I to thank for it?"

"I would that you could thank Him too."

Hubert made a sharp sound of disgust.

"Ah! yes," he said scornfully, "I knew it; Non nobis Domine, and the rest."

"Hubert," said Lady Maxwell, "I do not think you mean to insult me in this house; but either that is an insult, or else I misunderstood you wholly, and must ask your pardon for it."

"Well," he said, in a harsh voice, "I will make myself plain. I believe that it is through the influence of you and Aunt Margaret that this has been brought about."

At the moment he spoke the door opened.

"Come in, Margaret," said her sister, "this concerns you."

The old nun came across to Hubert with her anxious sweet face; and put her old hand tenderly on his black satin sleeve as he sat and wrenched at a nut between his fingers.

"Hubert, dear boy," she said, "what is all this? Will you tell me?"

Hubert rose, a little ashamed of himself, and went to the door and closed it; and then drew out a chair for his aunt, and put a wine-glass for her.

"Sit down, aunt," he said, and pushed the decanter towards her.

"I have just left Isabel," she said, "she is very unhappy about something. You saw her this evening, dear lad?"

"Yes," said Hubert, heavily, looking down at the table and taking up another nut, "and it is of that that I have been speaking. Who has made her unhappy?"

"I had hoped you would tell us that," said Mistress Margaret; "I came up to ask you."

"My son has done us--me--the honour----" began Lady Maxwell; but Hubert broke in:

"I left Isabel here last Christmas happy and a Protestant. I have come back here now to find her unhappy and half a Catholic, if not more--and----"

"Oh! are you sure?" asked Mistress Margaret, her eyes shining. "Thank God, if it be so!"

"Sure?" said Hubert, "why she will not marry me; at least not yet."

"Oh, poor lad," she said tenderly, "to have lost both God and Isabel."

Hubert turned on her savagely. But the old nun's eyes were steady and serene.

"Poor lad!" she said again.

Hubert looked down again; his lip wrinkled up in a little sneer.

"As far as I am concerned," he said, "I can understand your not caring, but I am astonished at this response of yours to her father's confidence!"

Lady Maxwell grew white to the lips.

"I have told you," she began--"but you do not seem to believe it--that I have had nothing to do, so far as I know, with her conversion, which"--and she raised her voice bravely--"I pray God to accomplish. She has, of course, asked me questions now and then; and I have answered them--that is all."

"And I," said Mistress Margaret, "plead guilty to the same charge, and to no other. You are not yourself, dear boy, at present; and indeed I do not wonder at it; and I pray God to help you; but you are not yourself, or you would not speak like this to your mother."

Hubert rose to his feet; his face was white under the tan, and the ruffle round his wrist trembled as he leaned heavily with his fingers on the table.

"I am only a plain Protestant now," he said bitterly, "and I have been with Protestants so long that I have forgotten Catholic ways; but----"

"Stay, Hubert," said his mother, "do not finish that. You will be sorry for it presently, if you do. Come, Margaret." And she moved towards the door; her son went quickly past and opened it.

"Nay, nay," said the nun. "Do you be going, Mary. Let me stay with the lad, and we will come to you presently." Lady Maxwell bowed her head and passed out, and Hubert closed the door.

Mistress Margaret looked down on the table.

"You have given me a glass, dear boy; but no wine in it."

Hubert took a couple of quick steps back, and faced her.

"It is no use, it is no use," he burst out, and his voice was broken with emotion, "you cannot turn me like that. Oh, what have you done with my Isabel?" He put out his hand and seized her arm. "Give her back to me, Aunt Margaret; give her back to me."

He dropped into his seat and hid his face on his arm; and there was a sob or two.

"Sit up and be a man, Hubert," broke in Mistress Margaret's voice, clear and cool.

He looked up in amazement with wet indignant eyes. She was looking at him, smiling tenderly.

"And now, for the second time, give me half a glass of wine, dear boy."

He poured it out, bewildered at her self-control.

"For a man that has been round the world," she said, "you are but a foolish child."

"What do you mean?"

"Have you never thought of a way of yet winning Isabel," she asked.

"What do you mean?" he repeated.

"Why, come back to the Church, dear lad; and make your mother and me happy again, and marry Isabel, and save your own soul."

"Aunt Margaret," he cried, "it is impossible. I have truly lost my faith in the Catholic religion; and--and--you would not have me a hypocrite."

"Ah! ah!" said the nun, "you cannot tell yet. Please God it may come back. Oh! dear boy, in your heart you know it is true."

"Before God, in my heart I know that it is not true."

"No, no, no," she said; but the light died out of her eyes, and she stretched a tremulous hand.

"Yes, Aunt Margaret, it is so. For years and years I have been doubting; but I kept on just because it seemed to me the best religion; and--and I would not be driven out of it by her Grace's laws against my will, like a dog stoned from his kennel."

"But you are only a lad still," she said piteously. He laughed a little.

"But I have had the gift of reason and discretion nearly twenty years, a priest would tell me. Besides, Aunt Margaret, I could not be such a--a cur--as to come back without believing. I could never look Isabel in the eyes again."

"Well, well," said the old lady, "let us wait and see. Do you intend to be here now for a while?"

"Not while Isabel is like this," he said. "I could not. I must go away for a while, and then come back and ask her again."

"When will she decide?"

"She told me by next Easter," said Hubert. "Oh, Aunt Margaret, pray for us both."

The light began to glimmer again in her eyes.

"There, dear boy," she said, "you see you believe in prayer still."

"But, aunt," said Hubert, "why should I not? Protestants pray."

"Well, well," said the old nun again. "Now you must come to your mother; and--and be good to her."


CHAPTER V


THE COMING OF THE JESUITS

The effect on Anthony of Mr. Buxton's conversation was very considerable. He had managed to keep his temper very well during the actual interview; but he broke out alone afterwards, at first with an angry contempt. The absurd arrogance of the man made him furious--the arrogance that had puffed away England and its ambitions and its vigour--palpable evidences of life and reality, and further of God's blessing--in favour of a miserable Latin nation which had the presumption to claim the possession of Peter's Chair and of the person of the Vicar of Christ! Test it, said the young man to himself, by the ancient Fathers and Councils that Dr. Jewel quoted so learnedly, and the preposterous claim crumbled to dust. Test it, yet again, by the finger of Providence; and God Himself proclaimed that the pretensions of the spiritual kingdom, of which the prisoner in the cell had bragged, are but a blasphemous fable. And Anthony reminded himself of the events of the previous year.

Three great assaults had been made by the Papists to win back England to the old Religion. Dr. William Allen, the founder of Douai College, had already for the last seven or eight years been pouring seminary priests into England, and over a hundred and twenty were at work among their countrymen, preparing the grand attack. This was made in three quarters at once.

In Scotland it was chiefly political, and Anthony thought, with a bitter contempt, of the Count d'Aubigny, Esme Stuart, who was supposed to be an emissary of the Jesuits; how he had plotted with ecclesiastics and nobles, and professed Protestantism to further his ends; and of all the stories of his duplicity and evil-living, told round the guard-room fire.

In Ireland the attempt was little else than ludicrous. Anthony laughed fiercely to himself as he pictured the landing of the treacherous fools at Dingle, of Sir James FitzMaurice and his lady, very wretched and giddy after their voyage, and the barefooted friars, and Dr. Sanders, and the banner so solemnly consecrated; and of the sands of Smerwick, when all was over a year later, and the six hundred bodies, men and women who had preferred Mr. Buxton's spiritual kingdom to Elizabeth's kindly rule, stripped and laid out in rows, like dead game, for Lord Grey de Wilton to reckon them by.

But his heart sank a little as he remembered the third method of attack, and of the coming of the Jesuits. By last July all London knew that