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

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In the cloister beneath was a pleasant little oak parlour looking out on to the garden and the long south side of the house. Mistress Margaret took the little hand-lamp that burned in the cloister itself as they passed along silently together, and guided the girl through into the parlour on the left-hand side. There was a tall chair standing before the hearth, and as Mistress Margaret sat down, drawing the girl with her, Isabel sank down on the footstool at her feet, and hid her face on the old nun's knees.

There was silence for a minute or two. Mistress Margaret set down the lamp on the table beside her, and passed her hands caressingly over the girl's hands and hair; but said nothing, until Isabel's whole body heaved up convulsively once or twice, before she burst into a torrent of weeping.

"My darling," said the old lady in a quiet steady voice, "we should thank God instead of grieving. To think that this house should have given two confessors to the Church, father and son! Yes, yes, dear child, I know what you are thinking of, the two dear lads we both love; well, well, we do not know, we must trust them both to God. It may not be true of Anthony; and even if it be true--well, he must have thought he was serving his Queen. And for Hubert----"

Isabel lifted her face and looked with a dreadful questioning stare.

"Dear child," said the nun, "do not look like that. Nothing is so bad as not trusting God."

"Anthony, Anthony!"... whispered the girl.

"James told us the same story as the gentleman on Sunday," went on the nun. "But he said no hard word, and he does not condemn. I know his heart. He does not know why he is released, nor by whose order: but an order came to let him go, and his papers with it: and he must be out of England by Monday morning: so he leaves here to-morrow in the litter in which he came. He is to say mass to-morrow, if he is able."

"Mass? Here?" said the girl, in the same sharp whisper; and her sobbing ceased abruptly.

"Yes, dear; if he is able to stand and use his hands enough. They have settled it upstairs."

Isabel continued to look up in her face wildly.

"Ah!" said the old nun again. "You must not look like that. Remember that he thinks those wounds the most precious things in the world--yes--and his mother too!"

"I must be at mass," said Isabel; "God means it."

"Now, now," said Mistress Margaret soothingly, "you do not know what you are saying."

"I mean it," said Isabel, with sharp emphasis; "God means it."

Mistress Margaret took the girl's face between her hands, and looked steadily down into her wet eyes. Isabel returned the look as steadily.

"Yes, yes," she said, "as God sees us."

Then she broke into talk, at first broken and incoherent in language, but definite and orderly in ideas, and in her interpretations of these last months.

Kneeling beside her with her hands clasped on the nun's knee, Isabel told her all her struggles; disentangling at last in a way that she had never been able to do before, all the complicated strands of self-will and guidance and blindness that had so knotted and twisted themselves into her life. The nun was amazed at the spiritual instinct of this Puritan child, who ranged her motives so unerringly; dismissing this as of self, marking this as of God's inspiration, accepting this and rejecting that element of the circumstances of her life; steering confidently between the shoals of scrupulous judgment and conscience on the one side, and the hidden rocks of presumption and despair on the other--these very dangers that had baffled and perplexed her so long--and tracing out through them all the clear deep safe channel of God's intention, who had allowed her to emerge at last from the tortuous and baffling intricacies of character and circumstance into the wide open sea of His own sovereign Will.

It seemed to the nun, as Isabel talked, as if it needed just a final touch of supreme tragedy to loosen and resolve all the complications; and that this had been supplied by the vision upstairs. There she had seen a triumphant trophy of another's sorrow and conquest. There was hardly an element in her own troubles that was not present in that human Pieta upstairs--treachery--loneliness--sympathy--bereavement--and above all the supreme sacrificial act of human love subordinated to divine--human love, purified and transfigured and rendered invincible and immortal by the very immolation of it at the feet of God--all this that the son and mother in their welcome of pain had accomplished in the crucifixion of one and the heart-piercing of the other--this was light opened to the perplexed, tormented soul of the girl--a radiance poured out of the darkness of their sorrow and made her way plain before her face.

"My Isabel," said the old nun, when the girl had finished and was hiding her face again, "this is of God. Glory to His Name! I must ask James' leave; and then you must sleep here to-night, for the mass to-morrow."

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The chapel at Maxwell Hall was in the cloister wing; but a stranger visiting the house would never have suspected it. Opening out of Lady Maxwell's new sitting-room was a little lobby or landing, about four yards square, lighted from above; at the further end of it was the door into her bedroom. This lobby was scarcely more than a broad passage; and would attract no attention from any passing through it. The only piece of furniture in it was a great tall old chest as high as a table, that stood against the inner wall beyond which was the long gallery that looked down upon the cloister garden. The lobby appeared to be practically as broad as the two rooms on either side of it; but this was effected by the outer wall being made to bulge a little; and the inner wall being thinner than inside the two living-rooms. The deception was further increased by the two living-rooms being first wainscoted and then hung with thick tapestry; while the lobby was bare. A curious person who should look in the chest would find there only an old dress and a few pieces of stuff. This lobby, however, was the chapel; and through the chest was the entrance to one of the priest's hiding holes, where also the altar-stone and the ornaments and the vestments were kept. The bottom of the chest was in reality hinged in such a way that it would fall, on the proper pressure being applied in two places at once, sufficiently to allow the side of the chest against the wall to be pushed aside, which in turn gave entrance to a little space some two yards long by a yard wide; and here were kept all the necessaries for divine worship; with room besides for a couple of men at least to be hidden away. There was also a way from this hole on to the roof, but it was a difficult and dangerous way; and was only to be used in case of extreme necessity.

It was in this lobby that Isabel found herself the next morning kneeling and waiting for mass. She had been awakened by Mistress Margaret shortly before four o'clock and told in a whisper to dress herself in the dark; for it was impossible under the circumstances to tell whether the house was not watched; and a light seen from outside might conceivably cause trouble and disturbance. So she had dressed herself and come down from her room along the passages, so familiar during the day, so sombre and suggestive now in the black morning with but one shaded light placed at the angles. Other figures were stealing along too; but she could not tell who they were in the gloom. Then she had come through the little sitting-room where the scene of last night had taken place and into the lobby beyond.

But the whole place was transformed.

Over the old chest now hung a picture, that usually was in Lady Maxwell's room, of the Blessed Mother and her holy Child, in a great carved frame of some black wood. The chest had become an altar: Isabel could see the slight elevation in the middle of the long white linen cloth where the altar-stone lay, and upon that again, at the left corner, a pile of linen and silk. Upon the altar at the back stood two slender silver candlesticks with burning tapers in them; and a silver crucifix between them. The carved wooden panels, representing the sacrifice of Isaac on the one half and the offering of Melchisedech on the other, served instead of an embroidered altar-frontal. Against the side wall stood a little white-covered folding table with the cruets and other necessaries upon it.

There were two or three benches across the rest of the lobby; and at these were kneeling a dozen or more persons, motionless, their faces downcast. There was a little wind such as blows before the dawn moaning gently outside; and within was a slight draught that made the taper flames lean over now and then.

Isabel took her place beside Mistress Margaret at the front bench; and as she knelt forward she noticed a space left beyond her for Lady Maxwell. A moment later there came slow and painful steps through the sitting-room, and Lady Maxwell came in very slowly with her son leaning on her arm and on a stick. There was a silence so profound that it seemed to Isabel as if all had stopped breathing. She could only hear the slow plunging pulse of her own heart.

James took his mother across the altar to her place, and left her there, bowing to her; and then went up to the altar to vest. As he reached it and paused, a servant slipped out and received the stick from him. The priest made the sign of the cross, and took up the amice from the vestments that lay folded on the altar. He was already in his cassock.

Isabel watched each movement with a deep agonising interest; he was so frail and broken, so bent in his figure, so slow and feeble in his movements. He made an attempt to raise the amice but could not, and turned slightly; and the man from behind stepped up again and lifted it for him. Then he helped him with each of the vestments, lifted the alb over his head and tenderly drew the bandaged hands through the sleeves; knit the girdle round him; gave him the stole to kiss and then placed it over his neck and crossed the ends beneath the girdle and adjusted the amice; then he placed the maniple on his left arm, but so tenderly! and lastly, lifted the great red chasuble and dropped it over his head and straightened it--and there stood the priest as he had stood last Sunday, in crimson vestments again; but bowed and thin-faced now.

Then he began the preparation with the servant who knelt beside him in his ordinary livery, as server; and Isabel heard the murmur of the Latin words for the first time. Then he stepped