Penshurst Castle Part 40

'"Mother," my boy said, as he clasped my hand tightly in his, as the barge which bore the coffin away vanished in the mist hanging over the river, "mother, why doth G.o.d take hence a brave and n.o.ble knight, and leave so many who are evil and do evil instead of good?"

'How can I answer questions like to this? I could only say to my son, "There is no answer. Now we only see as in a mirror darkly; at length we shall see clearer in the Light of G.o.d, and His ways are ever just."

'Dear sister, it is strange to have the hunger of my heart satisfied by G.o.d's gift to me of my boy from the very gates of death, and yet to have that same heart oppressed with sorrow for those who are left to mourn for the brave and n.o.ble one who is pa.s.sed out of our sight. Yet is that same heart full of thankfulness that I have recovered my child. It is not all satisfaction with him. Every day I have to pray that much that he has learned in the Jesuit school should be unlearned. Yet, G.o.d forbid I should be slow to acknowledge that in some things Ambrose has been trained well--in obedience, and the putting aside of self, and the mortification of appet.i.te. Yes, I feel that in this discipline he may have reaped a benefit which with me he might have missed. But, oh! Lucy, there are moments when I long with heart-sick longing for my joyous, if wilful child, who, on a fair spring evening long ago, sat astride on Sir Philip's horse, and had for his one wish to be such another brave and n.o.ble gentleman!

'Methinks this wish is gaining strength, and that the strange repression of all natural feeling which I sometimes notice, may vanish 'neath the brighter shining of love--G.o.d's love and his mother's.

'You would scarce believe, could you see Ambrose, that he--so tall and thin, with quiet and restrained movements and seldom smiling mouth--could be the little torment of Ford Place! Four years have told on my boy, like thrice that number, and belike the terrible ravages of the fever may have taken something of his youthful spring away.

'He is tender and gentle to me, but there is reserve.

'On one subject we can exchange but few words; you will know what that subject is. From the little I can gather, I think his father was not unkind to him; and far be it from me to forget the parting words, when the soul was standing ready to take its flight into the unseen world. But oh! my sister, how wide the gulf set between him, for whom the whole world, I may say, wears mourning garb to-day--for foreign countries mourn no less than England--how wide, I say, is the gulf set between that n.o.ble life and his, of whom I dare not write, scarce dare to think.

'Yet G.o.d's mercy is infinite in Christ Jesus, and the gulf, which looks so wide to us, may be bridged over by that same infinite mercy.

'G.o.d grant it.

'This with my humble, dutiful sympathy to your dear lady, the Countess of Pembroke, for whom no poor words of man can be of comfort, from your loving sister,

MARY GIFFORD.

'_Post Scriptum._--Master Humphrey Ratcliffe has proved a true friend to me, and to my boy. To him, under G.o.d, I owe my child's restoration to health, and to me.

'He is away with that solemn and sorrowful train I saw embark for Flushing, nor do I know when he will return.

M. G.'

'At Penshurst, in the month of February 1586,--For you, my dear sister Mary, I will write some account of the sorrowful pageant, from witnessing which I have lately returned to Penshurst with my dear and sorely-stricken mistress, and all words would fail me to tell you how heavy is her grief, and how n.o.bly she has borne herself under its weight.

'Four long and weary months have these been since the news of Sir Philip's death came to cast a dark shadow over this country. Much there has been to hara.s.s those who are intimately connected with him. Of these troubles I need not write. The swift following of Sir Philip's death on that of his honoured father, Sir Henry Sidney, caused mighty difficulties as to the carrying out of that last will and testament in which he so n.o.bly desired to have every creditor satisfied, and justice done.

'But, sure, no man had ever a more generous and worthy father-in-law than Sir Philip possessed in Sir Francis Walsingham. All honour be to him for the zeal and care he has shown in the settlement of what seemed at the first insurmountable mountains of difficulties.

'Of these it does not become me to speak, rather of that day, Thursday last past, when I was witness of the great ceremony of burying all that was mortal of him for whom Queen and peasant weep.

'Mary! you can scarce picture to yourself the sight which I looked on from a cas.e.m.e.nt by the side of my dear mistress. All the long train of mourners taken from every cla.s.s, the uplifted standard with the Cross of St George, the esquires and gentlemen in their long cloaks of mourning garb, these were a wondrous spectacle. In the long train was Sir Philip's war horse, led by a footman and ridden by a little page bearing a broken lance, followed by another horse, like the first, richly caparisoned, ridden by a boy holding a battle-axe reversed. All this I say I gazed at as a show, and my mistress, like myself, was tearless. I could not believe, nay, I could not think of our hero as connected with this pageant. Nay, nor with that coffin, shrouded in black velvet, carried by seven yeomen, and the pall borne by those gentlemen who loved him best, his dearest friends, Sir Fulke Greville, Sir Edward Dyer, Edward Watson, and Thomas Dudley.

'Next came the two brothers, Sir Robert--now Lord of Penshurst--chief mourner, and behind, poor Mr Thomas Sidney, who was so bowed down with grief that he could scarce support himself.

'Earls and n.o.bles, headed by my Lord of Leicester, came after; and the gentlemen from the Low Countries, of whom you will have heard, and all the great city folk--Lord Mayor and Sheriffs--bringing up the rear.

'My dear mistress and I, with many other ladies of her household, having watched the long train pa.s.s us from the Minories, were conveyed by back ways to St Paul's, and, from a seat appointed us and other wives of n.o.bles and their gentlewomen, we were present at the last scene.

'It was when the coffin, beautifully adorned with escutcheons, was placed on a bier prepared for it, that my mistress said, in a low voice, heard by me--perhaps by me only,--

'"_Beati mortui qui in Domino moriuntur._"

'These words were the motto on the coffin, and they were the words on which the preacher tried to enforce his lesson.

'Up to the moment when the double volley was fired, telling us within the church that the body rested in peace, there had been profound stillness.

'Then the murmur of a mult.i.tude sorrowing and sighing, broke upon the ear; and yet, beyond those whispered words, my lady had not made any sign.

'Now she laid her hand in mine and said,--

'"Let us go and see where they have laid him."

'I gave notice to the gentlemen in attendance that this was my lady's desire. We had to wait yet for a long s.p.a.ce; the throng, so closely packed, must needs disperse.

'At length way was made for us, and we stood by the open grave together--my mistress, whose life had been bound up in her n.o.ble brother's, and I, to whom he had been, from my childhood's days to the present, the hero to whose excellence none could approach--a sun before whose shining other lights grew dim.

'Do not judge me hardly! Nay, Mary, you of all others will not do this. My love for him was sacred, and I looked for no return; but let none grudge it to me, for it drew me ever upwards, and, as I humbly pray, will still do so till I see him in the other life, whither he has gone.

'Throughout all this pageantry and symbols of woe which I have tried to bring before you, my dear sister, I felt only that these signs of the great grief of the whole realm were yet but vain, vain, vain.

'As in a vision, I was fain to see beyond the blackness of funeral pomp, the exceeding beauty of his soul, who, when he lay a-dying, said he had fixed his thoughts on these eternal beauties, which cheered his decaying spirits, and helped him to take possession of the immortal inheritance given to him by, and in Christ.

'"Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord; blessed be those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."

'I have finished the task I set myself to do for your edification, dearest sister. Methought I could scarce get through it for tears, but these did not flow at my will. Not till this morning, when I betook myself to the park, where all around are signs of a springing new life, and memories of Sir Philip in every part, did these tears I speak of have their free way.

All things wakening into life, buds swelling on the stately trees he loved; birds singing, for the time to pair is come; dew sparkling like the l.u.s.tre of precious stones on every twig and blade of gra.s.s, daisies with golden eyes peeping up between. Life, life, everywhere quickening life, and he who loved life, and to see good days, can walk no more in the old dear paths of his home, which he trod with so graceful and alert a step, his smile like the sunshine lying on the gate of the President's Court, under which he that went out on the November morning in all the glory of his young manhood, shall pa.s.s in no more for ever.

'As I thought of seeing him thus, with the light on his bright hair and glistening armour, as he took his infant child in his arms and bade her farewell, I wept, not bitter tears, but those G.o.d sends to us as a blessing when the heart desires some ease of its burden.

'It may be that you will care to read what I have written to the boy Ambrose. Bid him from me to remember his old desire to be such another brave and goodly knight as Sir Philip Sidney, and strive to follow him in all loyal service to his G.o.d, his Queen, and his kindred.

'I am thinking often, Mary, of your return to this country. Will it never come to pa.s.s? You told me in your letter in which you gave me those particulars of Sir Philip's death, that I should scarce believe that Ambrose was the child I knew at the old home of Ford Place. And scarce will you believe, when we meet, as meet I pray we shall, I am the same Lucy of days past. Ever since that time of your grief and sickness, I have changed.

I look back with something which is akin to pity on the vain child who thought fine clothes and array the likest to enhance the fair face and form which maybe G.o.d has given me. Ay, Mary, I have learned better now. I should have been a dullard, in sooth, had I not learned much in the companionship graciously granted me by my honoured mistress. To be near her is an education, and she has been pleased in many ways to instruct me, not only in the needlecraft and tapestry work in which she excels, but also in opening for me the gates of knowledge, and in rehearsing in my ear the beautiful words of Scripture, and the Psalms in verse, as well as the poems of Mr Spenser, and, chiefest of all, of those works in prose and verse which Sir Philip has left behind. Sure, these will never die, and will tell those who come after us what we possessed and lost!

'Yet, after all, as my mistress saith again and yet again, it was not by all his deeds of valour and his gifts of learning that he stands so high forever amongst men. No, nor not by his death and the selfless act which men are speaking of on all sides, as he lay in the first agony of his sore wound on the battlefield of Zutphen. Not by these only will his name live, but by his life, which, for purity and faith, virtue and G.o.dliness, loyalty and truth, may be said to be without peer in this age of which he was so fair an ornament.

'I dare not say more, lest even you charge me with rhapsody.

'I rest, dear Mary, in all loving and tender affection, your sister,

LUCY FORRESTER.

'To my honoured sister, Mary Gifford, at the house of Master Gifford, in Arnhem, February 1586. From Penshurst Place, in the county of Kent.'

CHAPTER XVI

FOUR YEARS LATER--1590

'My true love hath my heart and I have his, By just exchange, one for the other given.