A Book Of Quaker Saints Part 5

Colonel Purefoy's remark was not destined to be revealed, for they had reached the tall gateway by this time. Old Thomas, seeing his little mistress approaching, accompanied only by the Weaver's son, and with s...o...b..ll obviously damaged, had hobbled to meet them in spite of his rheumatics. Close at hand was Cecily, brimful of excitement at the sight of her fairy princess actually stopping at their own cottage door. The tall youth handed the pony's bridle to the old man, and was departing with evident relief, when a clear, imperious voice stopped him--

'Good-bye and good-day to you, Weaver's son, and thanks for your aid,'

said Jocosa, like a queen dismissing a subject.

The tall figure looked down upon the patronizing little lady, as if from a remote height. 'Mayest thou verily fare well,' he said, almost with solemnity, and then, without removing his hat or making any gesture of respect, he turned abruptly and was gone.

'A strange boy,' Joyce said to herself a few minutes later as she stood on the stone bridge that crossed the moat in front of the Manor House. 'I did not like him; in fact I rather disliked him--but I should like to see him again and find out what he meant by his "steeple-house" and "verily."'

Cecily, left behind at the Lodge, very happy because her fairy princess had actually thrown her a smile as she pa.s.sed, was still following the distant figure on the bridge with wistful eyes, as Joyce busily searched her pockets for a few stray crumbs with which to feed the swans in the moat. The scarlet riding-dress, glossy tippet, and scarlet feather in the big brown hat were all faithfully reflected in the clear water below, except where the swans interrupted the vivid picture with dazzling snowy curves and orange webbed feet.

More critical eyes than Cecily's were also watching Joyce. High up on the terrace, where a few late roses and asters were still in bloom, two figures were leaning over the stone parapet, looking down over the moat. 'A fair maiden, indeed,' a voice was saying, in low, polished tones. The next moment the sound of her own name made the girl look up. There, coming towards her, at the very top of the flight of shallow stone steps that led from the terrace to the low stone bridge, she saw her father, and with him a stranger, dressed, not like Colonel Purefoy, in a slightly archaic costume, but in the very latest fashion of King Charles's Court at Whitehall.

'My father come home already! and a stranger with him! What an unlucky chance after the misadventure of the morning!'

Throwing her remaining crumbs over the swans in a swift shower, Joyce made haste up the stone steps, to greet the two gentlemen with the reverence always paid by children to their elders in those days.

Somewhat to her surprise, her father bent down and kissed her cheek.

Then, taking her hand, he led her towards the stranger, and presented her very gravely. 'My daughter, Jocosa: my good friend, Sir Everard Danvers.' 'Exactly as if I had been a grown-up lady at Court,' thought Joyce, delighted, with the delight of thirteen, at her own unexpected importance. Her father had never paid her so much attention before.

Well, at least he should see that she was worthy of it now. And Joyce dropped her lowest, most formal, curtsey, as the stranger bowed low over her hand. To curtsey at the edge of a flight of steps, and in a clinging riding skirt, was an accomplishment of which anyone might be proud. Was the stranger properly impressed? He appeared grave enough, anyhow, and a very splendid figure in his suit of sky-blue satin, short shoulder cape, and pointed lace collar. He was a strikingly handsome man, of a dark-olive complexion, with good features, and jet-black hair; but strangely enough, the sight of him made Joyce turn back to her father, feeling as if she had never understood before the comfort of his quiet, familiar face. Even the old-fashioned ruff gave her a sense of home and security. She would tell him about the morning's disasters now after all. But Colonel Purefoy's questions came first. 'How now, Jocosa, and wherefore alone? My daughter rides with her brother in my absence,' he added, turning to his companion.

'Father,--s...o...b..ll,...' began Joyce bravely, her colour rising as she spoke.

'Talk not of s...o...b..a.l.l.s,' interrupted Sir Everard gallantly, 'it may be November by the calendar, but here it is high summer yet, with roses all abloom.' He pointed to her crimsoning cheeks.

They quickly flushed a deeper crimson, evidently to the stranger's amus.e.m.e.nt. 'Why here comes Maiden's Blush, Queen of all the Roses' he went on, in a teasing voice. Then, turning to Colonel Purefoy, 'By my faith, Purefoy,' he said, 'my scamp of a nephew is a lucky dog.'

Joyce's bewilderment increased. What did it all mean? Was he play-acting? Why did they both treat her so? The stranger's punctilious politeness had flattered her at first, but, since the mocking tone stole into his voice she felt that she hated him, and looked round hoping to escape. Sir Everard was too quick for her. In that instant he had managed to possess himself of her hand, and now he was kissing it with exaggerated homage and deference, yet still with that mocking smile that seemed to say--'Like it, or like it not, little I care.'

Joyce had often seen people kiss her mother's hand, and had thought, as she watched the delightful process, how much she should enjoy it, when her own turn came. She knew better now: it was not a delightful process at all, it was simply hateful. A new Joyce suddenly woke up within her, a frightened, angry Joyce, who wanted to run away and hide. All her new-born dignity vanished in a moment. Scarcely waiting for her father's amused permission: 'There then, maiden, haste to thy mother: she has news for thee'--she flew along the terrace and in at the hall door. As she fled up the oak staircase that led to her mother's withdrawing-room, she vainly tried to shut her ears to the sounds of laughter that floated after her from the terrace below.

Madam Purefoy was seated, half hidden behind her big, upright embroidery frame, in one of the recesses formed by the high, deeply mullioned windows. Thin rays of autumn sunshine filled the tapestried room with pale, clear light. There was no possibility of mistaking the colours of the silks that lay in their varied hues close under her hand. Why, then, had this skilful embroideress deliberately threaded her needle with a shade of brilliant blue silk? Why was she carefully using it to fill in a lady's cheek without noticing, apparently, that anything was wrong? Yet, at the first sound of Joyce's light footfall on the stairs she laid down her needle and listened, and held out her arms, directly her daughter appeared, flushed and agitated, in the doorway, waiting for permission to enter.

Mothers were mothers, it seems, even in the seventeenth century. In another minute Joyce was in her arms, pouring out the whole history of the morning. By this time s...o...b..ll's lameness had faded behind the remembrance of the encounter on the terrace.

'Who is that man, mother? A courtier, I know, since he wears such beautiful clothes. But wherefore comes he here? I thought I liked him, until he kissed my hand and laughed at me, and then I detested him. I hope I shall never see him again.' And she hid her face.

Before speaking, Mistress Purefoy left her seat and carefully closed the cas.e.m.e.nt, in order that their voices might not reach the ears of anyone on the terrace below. Then, taking Joyce on her knee as if she had been still a child, she explained to her that the stranger, Sir Everard Danvers, was a well-known and favourite attendant of the Queen's. 'And it is by her wish that he comes. .h.i.ther for thee, Mignonne.'

'For me?' Joyce grew rosier than ever; 'I am too young yet to be a Maid of Honour as thou wert in thy girlhood. What does her Majesty know about me?' she questioned.

'Only that thou art my daughter, and that she is my very good friend.

Her Majesty knows also that, in time, thou wilt inherit some of my Yorkshire estates; and therefore she hath sent Sir Everard to demand thy hand in marriage for his nephew and ward, the young Viscount Danvers, whose property marches with ours. Moreover, seeing that the times are unsettled, her Majesty hath signified her pleasure that not a mere betrothal, but the marriage ceremony itself, shall take place as soon as possible in the Chapel Royal at St. James's, since the young Viscount, thy husband to be, is attached to her suite as a page.'

'But I am not fourteen yet,' faltered Joyce, ''tis full soon to be wed.' A vista of endless court curtseys and endless mocking strangers swam before her eyes, and prevented her being elated with the prospect that would otherwise have appeared so dazzling.

Her mother stifled a sigh. 'Aye truly,' she replied, 'thy father and I have both urged that. But her Majesty hath never forgotten the French fashion of youthful marriages, and is bent on the scheme. She says, with truth, that thou must needs have a year or two's education after thy marriage for the position thou wilt have in future to fill at Court, and 'tis better to have the contract settled first.'

Education! To be married at thirteen might be a glorious thing, but to be sent back, a bride, for a year or two of education thereafter was a dismal prospect.

That night there were tears of excitement and dismay on the pillow of the Viscountess-to-be as she thought of the alarming future. Yet she woke up, laughing, in the morning sunlight, for she had dreamt that she was fastening a coronet over her brown hair.

The wedding festivities a few weeks later left nothing to be desired.

Day after day Joyce found herself the caressed centre of a brilliant throng that held but one disappointing figure--her boy bridegroom. 'He has eyes like a weasel, and a nose like a ferret,' was the bride's secret criticism, when the introduction took place. But, after all, the bridegroom was one of the least important parts of the wedding: far less important than the Prince of Wales, who led her out to dance, and whom she much preferred: far less important also than the bridegroom's cousin, Abigail, a bold, black-eyed girl who took country-bred Joyce under her protection at once, and saved her from many a mistake. Abigail was already at the school to which Joyce was to be sent. She herself was betrothed, though not as yet married, to my Lord Darcy, and was therefore able to instruct Joyce herself in many of the needful accomplishments of her new position.

The school days that followed were not unhappy ones, since, far better than their books, both girls loved their embroidery work and other 'curious and ingenious manufactures,' especially the new and fashionable employment of making samplers, which had just been introduced. But when, in a short time, the Civil Wars broke out, their peaceful world collapsed like a house of cards. The 'position' of the young Viscountess and her husband vanished into thin air. One winter at Court the young couple spent together, it is true, when the King and Queen were in Oxford, keeping state that was like a faint echo of Whitehall.

All too soon the fighting began again. In one of the earliest battles young Lord Danvers was severely wounded and sent home maimed for life.

His days at Court and camp were over. Summoning his wife to nurse him, he returned to his estate near Beverley in Yorkshire, where the next few years of Joyce's life were spent, to her ill-concealed displeasure.

Her husband's days were evidently numbered, and as he grew weaker, he grew more exacting. Patience had never been one of Joyce's strong points, and, though she did her best, time often dragged, and she mourned the cruel fate that had cast her lot in such an unquiet age.

Instead of wearing her coronet at Court, here she was moping and mewed up in a stiff, puritanical countryside.

After the triumph of the Parliamentarians, things grew worse. It would have gone hard with the young couple had not a neighbour of theirs, of much influence with the Protector, one Justice Hotham, made representations as to the young lord's dying state and so ensured their being left unmolested.

Justice Hotham was a fatherly old man with a genius for understanding his neighbours, especially young people. He was a good friend to Joyce, and perpetually urged her to cherish her husband while he remained with her. Judge then of the good Justice's distress, when, one fine day, a note was brought to him from his wilful neighbour to say that she could bear her lot no longer, that her dear friend Abigail, Lady Darcy, was now on her way to join the Queen in France, and had persuaded Joyce to leave her husband and accompany her thither.

The Justice looked up in dismay: a dismay reflected on the face of the waiting-woman to whom Joyce had entrusted her confidential letter.

This was a certain blue-eyed Cecily, now a tall and comely maiden, who had followed her mistress from her old home at Drayton-in-the-Clay.

'She must be stopped,' said the good Judge. 'Spending the night with Lady Darcy at the Inn at Beverley is she, sayest thou? And thou art to join her there? Hie thee after her then, and delay her at all costs.

Plague on this gouty foot that ties me here! Maiden, I trust in thee to bring her home.'

Cecily needed no second bidding. 'She will not heed me. No mortal man or woman can hinder my lady, once her mind is made up. Still I will do my best,' was her only answer to the Judge; while 'It would take an angel to stop her! May Heaven find one to do the work and send her home, or ever my lord finds out that she has forsaken him,' she prayed in the depths of her faithful heart.

Was it in answer to her prayer that the rain came down in such torrents that for two days the roads were impa.s.sable? Cecily was inclined to think so. Anyhow, Joyce and Abigail, growing tired of the stuffy inn parlour while the torrents descended, and having nothing to do, seeing that the day was the Sabbath, and therefore scrupulously observed without doors in Puritan Beverley, strolled through the Minster, meaning to make sport of the congregation and its ways thereafter. The sermon was long and tedious, but it was nearing its end as they entered. At the close a stranger rose to speak in the body of the Church, a tall stranger, who stood in the rays of the sun that streamed through a lancet window behind him. His first words arrested careless Joyce, though she paid small heed to preaching as a rule.

More than the words, something vaguely familiar in the tones of the voice and the piercing gaze that fell upon her out of the flood of sunlight, awoke in her the memory of that long ago Sunday of her childhood, of her theft of the cherries, of her 'disremembering,' and then of her mother's words, 'You, a Purefoy, to forget to be worthy of your name.'

Alas! where was her Pure Faith now? The preacher seemed to be speaking to her, to her alone: yet, strangely enough, to almost every heart in that vast congregation the message went home. Did the building itself rock and shake as if filled with power? The real Joyce was reached again: the real Joyce, though hidden now under the weight of years of self-pleasing, a heavier burden than any childish finery. Certainly reached she was, though Lady Darcy preserved through it all her cynical smile, and made sport of her friend's earnestness.

Nevertheless Lady Darcy went to France alone. Lady Danvers returned to her husband--too much accustomed to be left alone, poor man, to have been seriously disquieted by her absence. For the remainder of his short life his wife did her best to tend him dutifully. But she did leave him for an hour or two the day after her return, in order to go and throw herself on her knees beside kind old Justice Hotham, and confess to him how nearly she had deserted her post.

'And then what saved you?' enquired the wise old man, smoothing back the wavy hair from the wilful, lovely face that looked up to him, pleading for forgiveness.

'I think it was an angel,' said Joyce simply--'an angel or a spirit.

It rose up in Beverley Minster: it preached to us of the wonderful things of G.o.d: words that burned. The whole building shook. Afterwards it pa.s.sed away.'

Little she guessed that George Fox, the Weaver's son, the Judge's guest, seated in a deep recess of the long, panelled library, was obliged to listen to every word she spoke. Joyce never knew that the angel who had again enabled her to keep her 'Faith pure' was no stranger to her. Neither did it occur to him, whose thoughts were ever full of weightier matters than wilful woman's ways, that he had met this 'great woman of Beverley,' as he calls her, long before.

Only waiting-maid Cecily, who had prayed for an angel; Cecily, who had recognised the Weaver's son the first moment she saw him at the inn door; Cecily who had found in him, also, the messenger sent by G.o.d in answer to her prayer--wise Cecily kept silence until the day of her death.

George Fox says in his Journal:

'I was moved of the Lord to go to Beverley steeple-house, which was a place of high profession. Being very wet with rain, I went first to an inn. As soon as I came to the door, a young woman of the house said, "What, is it you? Come in," as if she had known me before, for the Lord's power bowed their hearts. So I refreshed myself and went to bed. In the morning, my clothes being still wet, I got ready, and, having paid for what I had, went up to the steeple-house where was a man preaching. When he had done, I was moved to speak to him and to the people in the mighty power of G.o.d, and turned them to their teacher, Christ Jesus. The power of the Lord was so strong that it struck a mighty dread among the people. The Mayor came and spoke a few words to me, but none had power to meddle with me, so I pa.s.sed out of the town, and the next day went to Justice Hotham's. He was a pretty tender man and had some experience of G.o.d's workings in his heart.

After some discourse with him of the things of G.o.d he took me into his closet, where, sitting together, he told me he had known that principle these ten years, and was glad that the Lord did now send his servants to publish it abroad among the people. While I was there a great woman of Beverley came to Justice Hotham about some business. In discourse she told him that "The last Sabbath day," as she called it, "an Angel or Spirit came into the church at Beverley and spoke the wonderful things of G.o.d, to the astonishment of all that were there: and when it had done, it pa.s.sed away, and they did not know whence it came or whither it went; but it astonished all, priests, professors and magistrates." This relation Justice Hotham gave me afterwards, and then I gave him an account that I had been that day at Beverley steeple-house and had declared truth to the priest and people there.'