Penshurst Castle Part 38

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BARON'S COURT, PENSHURST CASTLE.]

'Yes, yes!' Mistress Crawley said. 'Go--go, child, and I will follow with burnt feathers and cordial when I think the news is told,' and Mistress Crawley hurried away, the maidens scattering at her presence like a flock of pigeons.

Lucy took the despatch from the hand of the exhausted messenger, and went to perform her task.

Lady Pembroke was reading to her boy Will some pa.s.sages from the _Arcadia_, which, in leisure moments, she was condensing and revising, as a pleasant recreation after the work of sorting the family letters and papers, and deciding which to destroy and which to keep.

When Lucy tapped at the door, Will ran to open it.

Even the child was struck by the white face which he saw before him, and he exclaimed,--

'Mistress Lucy is sick, mother.'

'No,' Lucy said, 'dear Madam,' as Lady Pembroke turned, and, seeing her, rose hastily. 'No, Madam, I am not sick, but I bring you a despatch from Sir Francis Walsingham. It is ill news, dearest lady, but not news which leaves no room for hope.'

'It is news of Philip--Philip!' Lady Pembroke said, trying with trembling fingers to break the seal and detach the silk cord which fastened the letter. 'Take it, Lucy, and--and tell me the contents. I cannot see. I cannot open it!'

Then, while the boy nestled close to his mother, as if to give her strength by putting his arms round her, Lucy obeyed her instructions, and opening it, read the Earl of Leicester's private letter, which had accompanied the official despatch, giving an account of the investment of Zutphen and the battle which had been fought before its walls. This private letter was enclosed for Lady Pembroke in that to his Right Honourable and trusted friend Sir F. Walsingham.

'In the mist of the morning of the 23d, my incomparably brave nephew and your brother, Philip Sidney, with but five hundred foot and seven hundred hors.e.m.e.n, advanced to the very walls of Zutphen.

'It was hard fighting against a thousand of the enemy. Philip's horse was killed under him, and alas! he heightened the danger by his fearless courage; for he had thrown off his cuisses to be no better equipped than Sir William Pelham, who had no time to put on his own, and, springing on a fresh horse, he went hotly to the second charge. Again there was a third onset, and our incomparable Philip was shot in the left leg.

'They brought him near me, faint from loss of blood, and he called for water. They brought him a bottle full, and he was about to raise it to his parched lips, when he espied a poor dying soldier cast greedy, ghastly eyes thereon. He forbore to drink of the water, and, handing the bottle to the poor wretch, said,--

'"Take it--thy need is greater than mine."'

'Oh! Philip! Philip!' Lady Pembroke said, 'in death, as in life, self-forgetting and Christ-like in your deeds.'

Lucy raised her eyes from the letter and they met those of her mistress with perfect sympathy which had no need of words.

'Doth my uncle say more, Lucy? Read on.'

'And,' Lucy continued, in the same low voice, which had in it a ring of mingled pride in her ideal hero and sorrow for his pain, 'my nephew would not take on himself any glory or honour when Sir William Russel, also sorely wounded, exclaimed,--

'"Oh, n.o.ble Sir Philip, never did man attain hurt so honourably or so valiantly as you," weeping over him as if he had been his mistress.

'"I have done no more," he said, "than G.o.d and England claimed of me. My life could not be better spent than in this day's service." I ordered my barge to be prepared, and, the surgeons doing all they could to stanch the blood, Philip was conveyed to Arnhem. He rests now in the house of one Madam Gruithuissens, and all that love and care can do, dear niece, shall be done by his and your sorrowing uncle,

LEICESTER.

'Pardon this penmanship. It is writ in haste, and not without tears, for verily, I seem now to know, as never before, what the world and his kindred possess in Philip Sidney.

R. L.

'To my dear niece, Mary, Countess of Pembroke, from before Zutphen, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of grace 1586. Enclosed in despatch to the Right Honourable Sir Francis Walsingham.'

When Lucy had finished reading, the Countess took the letter, and rising, left the room, bidding Will to remain behind.

Mistress Crawley, who was waiting in the corridor to be called in with cordials and burnt feathers, was amazed to see her lady pa.s.s out with a faint, sad smile putting aside the offered cordial.

'Nay, good Crawley, my hurt lies beyond the cure of aught but that of Him who has stricken me. I would fain be alone.'

'Dear heart!' Mistress Crawley exclaimed, as she bustled into the room where Lucy still sat motionless, while Will, with childlike intolerance of suspense, ran off to seek someone who would speak, and not sit dumb and white like Lucy. 'Dear heart! I daresay it is not a death-wound. Sure, if there is a G.o.d in heaven, He will spare the life of a n.o.ble knight like Sir Philip. He will live,' Mistress Crawley said, taking a sudden turn from despair and fear to unreasonable hope. 'He will live, and we shall see him riding into the Court ere long, brave and hearty, so don't pine like that, Mistress Lucy; and I don't, for my part, know what right you have to take on like this; have a sup of cordial, and let us go about our business.'

But Lucy turned away her head, and still sat with folded hands where Lady Pembroke had left her.

Mistress Crawley finished by emptying the silver cup full of cordial herself, and, pressing her hand to her heart, said,--'She felt like to swoon at first, but it would do no good to sit moping, and Lucy had best bestir herself, and, for her part, she did not know why she should sit there as if she were moon-struck.'

The days were long over since Mistress Crawley had ordered Lucy, in the same commanding tones with which she often struck terror into the hearts of the other maidens, threatening them with dismissal and report of their ill-conduct to Lady Pembroke.

Lucy had won the place she held by her gentleness and submission, and, let it be said, by her quickness and readiness to perform the duties required of her.

So Mistress Crawley, finding her adjurations unheeded, bustled off to see that the maidens were not gossiping in the ante-chamber, but had returned to their work.

Lucy was thus left alone with her thoughts, and, in silence and solitude, she faced the full weight of this sorrow which had fallen on the house of Sidney, yes, and on her also.

'What right had she to sit and mourn? What part was hers in this great trouble?' Mistress Crawley's words were repeated again and again in a low whisper, as if communing with her own heart.

'What right have I? No right if right goes by possession. What right? Nay, none.'

Then, with a sudden awaking from the trance of sorrow, Lucy rose, the light came back to her eyes, the colour to her cheeks.

'Right? What right? Yes, the right that is mine, that for long, long years he has been as the sun in my sky. I have gloried in all his great gifts, I have said a thousand times that there were none like him, none. I have seen him as he is, and his goodness and truth have inspirited me in my weakness and ignorance to reach after what is pure and n.o.ble. Yes, I have a right, and oh! if, indeed, I never see him again, to my latest day I shall thank G.o.d I have known him, Philip, Sir Philip Sidney, true and n.o.ble knight.'

There was now a sound of more arrivals in the hall, and Lucy was leaving the room, fearing, hoping, that there might be yet further tidings, when the Earl of Pembroke came hastily along the corridor.

'How fares it with my lady, Mistress Forrester? I have come to give her what poor comfort lies in my power.'

The Earl's face betrayed deep emotion and anxiety.

Will came running after his father, delighted to see him; and in this delight forgetting what had brought him.

'Father! father! I have ridden old black Joan, and I can take a low fence, father.'

'Hush now, my son, thy mother is in sore trouble, as we all must be. Take me to thy mother, boy.'

'Uncle Philip will soon be well of his wound,' the child said, 'the bullet did not touch his heart, Master Ratcliffe saith.'