Clare Avery Part 53

"DIEU LA VOULU."

"Over himself and his own heart's complaining Victorious still."

The bells were pealing merrily for the marriage of Clare Avery--I beg her pardon--of Clare Tremayne; and the wedding party were seated at breakfast in the great hall at Enville Court.

"The bridesmaids be well-looking," said Lady Enville, behind her fan, to Sir Piers Feversham, who was her next neighbour,--for Sir Piers and Lucrece had come to the wedding--"and I do hear Mistress Penelope Travis--she of them that is nearest--is like to be the next bride of our vicinage."

"Say you so?" responded Sir Piers. "I do desire all happiness be with her. But there is one of yonder maids for whom in very deed I feel compa.s.sion, and it is Mistress Lysken Barnevelt. Her May is well-nigh over, and no bells be ringing for her. Poor maiden!"

"Go to, now, what dolts be men!" quoth Mistress Rachel Enville, addressing herself, to all appearance, to the dish of flummery which stood before her. "They think, poor misconceiving companions! that we be all a-dying for them. That's a man's notion. Moreover, they take it that 'tis the one end and aim of every woman in the world to be wed.

That's a man's notion, again. And belike they fancy, poor patches! that when she striketh thirty years on the bell, any woman will wed any man that will but take compa.s.sion to ask her. That caps all their notions.

(Thou shalt right seldom hear a woman to make no such a blunder. They know better.) Poor blockheads!--as if we could not be useful nor happy without _them_! Lysken Barnevelt and Rachel Enville, at the least, be not fools enough to think it."

"Neither is the Queen's Majesty, my mistress," observed Sir Piers, greatly amused.

"Who e'er said the Queen's Majesty were a fool?" demanded Rachel bluntly. "She is a woman, and no man--Heaven be praised for all His mercies!"

"Yet if no man were," pursued Sir Piers, "methinks you gentlewomen should be but ill bestead."

"Oh, should we so?" retorted Rachel. "Look you, women make no wars, nor serve therein: nor women be no lawyers, to set folk by the ears: nor women write not great tomes of controversy, wherein they curse the one the other because Nell loveth a white gown, and Bess would have a black.

Is the Devil a woman? Answer me that, I pray you."

"Do women make no wars?" laughed Sir Piers. "What! with Helen of Troy, and--"

"Good lack, my master!--and what ill had Helen's fair face wrought in all this world, had there been no dolts of men to be beguilen thereby?"

was Rachel's instant response.

Sir Piers made a hasty retreat from that part of the field.

"But, my mistress, though the Devil be no woman, yet was the woman the first to be deceived by him."

"Like enough!" snapped Rachel. "She sinned not open-eyed, as did Adam.

She trusted a man-devil, like too many of her daughters sithence, and she and they alike have found bitter cause to rue the day they did it."

Sir Piers prudently discovered that Lady Enville was asking him a question, and let Rachel alone thereafter.

Ay, Lysken Barnevelt adopted from choice the life to which Clare had been only willing to resign herself because she thought it was the Father's will. It amused Lysken to hear people pity her as one who had failed to win the woman's aim in life. To have failed to obtain what she had never sought, and did not want, was in Lysken's eyes an easily endurable affliction. The world was her home, while she pa.s.sed through it on her journey to the better Home: and all G.o.d's family were her brethren or her children. The two sisters from Enville Court were both happy and useful in their corners of the great harvest-field; but she was the happiest, and the best loved, and when G.o.d called her the most missed of all--this solitary Lysken. Distinguished by no unusual habit, fettered by no unnatural vow, she went her quiet, peaceful, blessed way--a nun of the Order of Providence, for ever.

And what was the fate of Lady Enville?

Just what is generally the fate of women of her type. They pa.s.s through life making themselves vastly comfortable, and those around them vastly uncomfortable, and then "depart without being desired." They are never missed--otherwise than as a piece of furniture might be missed. To such women the whole world is but a platform for the exhibition and glorification of the Great Me: and the persons in it are units with whom the Great Me deigns--or does not deign--to a.s.sociate. Happy are those few of them who awake, on this side of the dread tribunal, to the knowledge that in reality this Great Me is a very little me indeed, yet a soul that can be saved, and that may be lost.

And Rachel?--Ah, Rachel was missed when she went on the inevitable journey. The house was not the same without her. She had been like a fresh breeze blowing through it,--perhaps a little sharp at times, but always wholesome. Those among whom she had dwelt never realised all she had been to them, nor all the love they had borne to her, until they could tell her of it no more.

The winter of 1602 had come, and on the ground in Devonshire the snow lay deep. The trees, thickly planted all round Umberleigh, drooped with the white weight; and a keen North wind groaned among the branches. All was gloomy and chill outside.

And inside, all was gloomy and mournful too, for a soul was in departing. The ripe fruit that had tarried so late on the old tree, was shaken down at last. Softly and tenderly, the Lady Elizabeth, the young wife of Sir Robert Ba.s.set, was ministering to the last earthly needs of Philippa the aged, the sister of her husband's grandfather. [Note 1.]

"'Tis high time, Bess, child!" whispered the dying woman, true to her character to the last. "I must have been due on the roll of Death these thirty years. I began to marvel if he had forgot me. And I am going Home, child. Thank G.o.d, I am going Home!

"They are are all safe yonder, Bess--Arthur, and Nell [Wife of Sir Arthur Ba.s.set], and little Honor, and thy little lad [Arthur, who died in infancy], and Jack, and Frances--my darling sister!--and George, and Kate, and Nan. I am a.s.sured of them, all. There be James and Mall,-- well, I am not so sure of them. Would G.o.d I were! He knoweth.

"But I do hope I shall see my mother. And, O Bess! I shall see him--my blessed, beloved father--I _shall_ see him!

"And they'll be glad, child. They'll all be glad when they see poor blundering old Philippa come stumbling in at the gate. I mis...o...b.. if they look for it. They'll be glad!

"Bess, I do hope thou wilt ne'er turn thy back upon G.o.d so many years as I have done. And I had never turned to Him at last, if He had not stooped and turned me.

"Tell Robin, with my blessing, to be a whole man for G.o.d. A whole man and a true! He is too rash--and yet not bold [true] enough. He cares too much what other folk think. (Thank G.o.d, I ne'er fell in that trap!

'Tis an ill one to find the way out.) Do thou keep him steadfast, Bess.

He'll ask some keeping. There's work afore thee yet, child; 'tis work worthy an angel--to keep one man steadfast for G.o.d. Thou must walk close to G.o.d thyself to do it. And after all, 'twill be none of thy doing, but of His that wrought by thee.--

"And G.o.d bless the childre! I count there's the making of a true man in little Arthur. Thou mayest oft-times tell what a child is like to be when he is but four years old. G.o.d bless him, and make him another Arthur! (Nay, I stay me not at Robin's father, as thou dost. Another Arthur,--like that dear father of ours, whom we so loved! He is _the_ Arthur for me.) I can give the lad no better blessing.

"Wilt draw the curtain, Bess? I feel as though I might sleep. Bless thee, dear heart, for all thy tender ministering. And if I wake not again, but go to G.o.d in sleep,--farewell, and Christ be with thee!"

So she slept--and woke not again.

Three months after the death of Philippa Ba.s.set, came another death-- like hers, of an old woman full of years. The last of the Tudors pa.s.sed away from earth. Sir Robert Ba.s.set was free. To Stuart, or Seymour, or Clifford, he "owed no subscription." King of England he would be _de facto_, as _de jure_ he believed himself in his heart.

And but for two obstacles in his way, it might have been Robert Ba.s.set who seated himself on the seat of England's Elizabeth. For England was much exercised as to who had really the right to her vacant throne.

It was no longer a question of Salic law--a dispute whether a woman could reign. That point, long undetermined, had been finally settled fifty years before.

Nor was it any longer a doubtful matter concerning the old law of non-representation,--to which through centuries the English clung tenaciously,--the law which a.s.serted that if a son of the sovereign predeceased his father, leaving issue, that issue was barred from the succession, because the link which bound them to the throne was lost.

This had been "the custom of England" for at least three hundred years.

But, originally altered by the mere will of Edward the Third, the change had now been confirmed by inevitable necessity, for when the Wars of the Roses closed, links were lost in _all_ directions, and the custom of England could no longer be upheld.

The two obstacles in Robert Ba.s.set's way were the apathy of the majority, and the strong contrary determination of the few who took an interest in the question.

The long reign of Elizabeth, and her personal popularity, had combined to produce that apathy. Those who even dimly remembered the Wars of the Roses, and whose sympathies were fervid for White or Red, had been long dead when Elizabeth was gathered to her fathers. And to the new generation, White and Red were alike; the popular interest in the question was dead and buried also.

But there was a little knot of men and women whose interest was alive, and whose energies were awake. And all these sided with one candidate.

Sir Robert Cecil, the clever, wily son of the sagacious Burleigh,--Lord Rich and his wife Penelope sister of the beheaded Earl of Ess.e.x,--Robert Carey, a distant cousin of Queen Elizabeth through her mother,--his sister, Lady Scrope, one of the Queen's suite--and a few more, were all active in the interest of James the Sixth of Scotland, who was undoubtedly the true heir, if that true heir were not Sir Robert Ba.s.set.

In their way, too, there was an obstacle. And they were all intent on getting rid of it.

King Henry the Eighth had introduced into the complicated question of the succession one further complication, which several of his predecessors had tried to introduce in vain. The success of all, before him, had been at best only temporary. It took a Tudor will to do the deed, and it took an obsequious Tudor age to accept it.

This new element was the pure will of the sovereign. Richard the First had willed his crown to a nephew shut out by the law of non-representation, and the attempt had failed to change the order of succession. Edward the Third had in his life demanded the consent of his n.o.bility to a scheme exactly similar on behalf of his grandson, and his plan had taken effect for twenty-three years, mainly on account of the fact that the dispossessed heir, a protesting party in the first case, had been a consenting party in the second. But one great element in the success of Henry the Fourth was the return of the succession to the old and beloved order.

The principle on which Henry the Eighth had governed for nearly forty years was his own despotic will. And it would appear that England liked his strong hand upon the rein. He had little claim beyond his strong hand and (so much as he had of) his "Right Divine." Having become accustomed to obey this man's will for thirty-eight years, when that will altered the order of succession after the deaths of his own children, England placidly submitted to the prospective change.

His son, Edward the Sixth, followed his father's example, and again tried to alter the succession by will. But he had inherited only a portion of his father's prestige. The party which would have followed him was just the party which was not likely to struggle for its rights.

The order set up by Henry the Eighth prevailed over the change made by Edward the Sixth.

But when Elizabeth came to die, the prestige of Henry the Eighth had faded, and it was to her personal decision that England looked for the settlement of the long-vexed question. The little knot of persons who wished to secure the King of Scots' accession, therefore, were intensely anxious to obtain her a.s.sent to their project.

The Delphic oracle remained obstinately silent. Neither grave representations of necessity, nor coaxing, could induce her to open her lips upon the subject; and as no living creature had ever taken Elizabeth off her guard, there was no hope in that direction. The old woman remembered too well the winter day, forty-five years before, when the time-serving courtiers left the dying sister at Westminster, to pay court to the living sister at Hatfield; and with the mixture of weakness and shrewdness which characterised her, she refused to run the risk of its repet.i.tion by any choice of a successor from the candidates for the throne.