The King's Achievement Part 58

"We poor monks," the priest cried presently, "shall soon be cast out to beg our bread. The King's Grace--"

"Is not poverty one of the monastic vows?" put in Lady Torridon suddenly, still looking steadily at his half-drunk gla.s.s.

"Why, yes, mistress; and the King's Grace is determined to make us keep it, it seems."

He lifted his gla.s.s and finished it; and put out his hand again to the bottle.

"But that is a good work, surely," smiled the other. "It will be surely a safeguard against surfeiting and drunkenness."

Sir James rose instantly.

"Come, father," he said to the staring monk, "you will be tired out, and will want your bed."

A slow smile shone and laded on his wife's face as she rose and rustled down the long hall.

Such incidents as this made life at Overfield very difficult for them all; it was hard for these sore hearts to be continually on the watch for dangerous subjects, and only to be able to comfort one another when the mistress of the house was absent; but above all it was difficult for Margaret. She was nearly as silent as her mother, but infinitely more tender; and since the two were naturally together for the most part, except when the nun was at her long prayers, there were often very difficult and painful incidents.

For the first eighteen months after her return her mother let her alone; but as time went on and the girl's resolution persevered, she began to be subjected to a distressing form of slight persecution.

For example: Chris and his father came in one day in the autumn from a walk through the priory garden that lay beyond the western moat. As they pa.s.sed in the level sunshine along the prim box-lined paths, and had reached the centre where the dial stood, they heard voices in the summer-house that stood on the right behind a yew hedge.

Sir James hesitated a moment; and as he waited heard Margaret's voice with a thrill of pa.s.sion in it.

"I cannot listen to that, mother. It is wicked to say such things."

The two turned instantly, pa.s.sed along the path and came round the corner.

Margaret was standing with one hand on the little table, half-turned to go. Her eyes were alight with indignation, and her lips trembled. Her mother sat on the other side, her silver-handled stick beside her, and her hands folded serenely together.

Sir James looked from one to the other; and there fell a silence.

"Are you coming with us, Margaret?" he said.

The girl still hesitated a moment, glancing at her mother, and then stepped out of the summer-house. Chris saw that bitter smile writhe and die on the elder woman's face, but she said nothing.

Margaret burst out presently when they had crossed the moat and were coming up to the long grey-towered house.

"I cannot bear such talk, father," she said, with her eyes bright with angry tears, "she was saying such things about Rusper, and how idle we all were there, and how foolish."

"You must not mind it, my darling. Your mother does not--does not understand."

"There was never any one like Mother Abbess," went on the girl. "I never saw her idle or out of humour; and--and we were all so busy and happy."

Her eyes overflowed a moment; her father put his arm tenderly round her shoulders, and they went in together.

It was a terrible thing for Margaret to be thrown like this out of the one life that was a reality to her. As she looked back now it seemed as if the convent shone glorified and beautiful in a haze of grace. The discipline of the house had ordered and inspired the a.s.sociations on which memories afterwards depend, and had excluded the discordant notes that spoil the harmonies of secular life. The chapel, with its delicate windows, its oak rails, its scent of flowers and incense, its tiled floor, its single row of carved woodwork and the crosier by the Abbess's seat, was a place of silence instinct with a Divine Presence that radiated from the hanging pyx; it was these particular things, and not others like them, that had been the scene of her romance with G.o.d, her aspirations, tendernesses, tears and joys. She had walked in the tiny cloister with her Lover in her heart, and the glazed laurel-leaves that rattled in the garth had been musical with His voice; it was in her little white cell that she had learned to sleep in His arms and to wake to the brightness of His Face. And now all this was dissipated. There were other a.s.sociations with her home, of childish sorrows and pa.s.sions before she had known G.o.d, of hunting-parties and genial ruddy men who smelt of fur and blood, of her mother's chilly steady presence-- a.s.sociations that jarred with the inner life; whereas in the convent there had been nothing that was not redolent with efforts and rewards of the soul. Even without her mother life would have been hard enough now at Overfield; with her it was nearly intolerable.

Chris, however, was able to do a good deal for the girl; for he had suffered in the same way; and had the advantage of a man's strength. She could talk to him as to no one else of the knowledge of the interior vocation in both of them that persevered in spite of their ejection from the cloister; and he was able to remind her that the essence of the enclosure, under these circ.u.mstances, lay in the spirit and not in material stones.

It was an advantage for Chris too to have her under his protection. The fact that he had to teach her and remind her of facts that they both knew, made them more real to himself; and to him as to her there came gradually a kind of sorrow-shot contentment that deepened month by month in spite of their strange and distracting surroundings.

But he was not wholly happy about her; she was silent and lonely sometimes; he began to see what an immense advantage it would be to her in the peculiarly difficult circ.u.mstances of the time, to have some one of her own s.e.x and sympathies at hand. But he did not see how it could be arranged. For the present it was impossible for her to enter the Religious Life, except by going abroad; and so long as there was the faintest hope of the convents being restored in England, both she and her father and brother shrank from the step. And the hope was increased by the issue of the Six Articles in the following May, by which Transubstantiation was declared to be a revealed dogma, to be held on penalty of death by burning; and communion in one kind, the celibacy of the clergy, the perpetuity of the vow of chast.i.ty, private ma.s.ses, and auricular confession were alike ratified as parts of the Faith held by the Church of which Henry had made himself head.

Yet as time went on, and there were no signs of the restoration of the Religious Houses, Chris began to wonder again as to what was best for Margaret. Perhaps until matters developed it would be well for her to have some friend in whom she could confide, even if only to relax the strain for a few weeks. He went to his father one day in the autumn and laid his views before him.

Sir James nodded and seemed to understand.

"Do you think Mary would be of any service?"

Chris hesitated.

"Yes, sir, I think so--but--"

His father looked at him.

"It is a stranger I think that would help her more. Perhaps another nun--?"

"My dear lad, I dare not ask another nun. Your mother--"

"I know," said Chris.

"Well, I will think of it," said the other.

A couple of days later Sir James took him aside after supper into his own private room.

"Chris," he said, "I have been thinking of what you said. And Mary shall certainly come here for Christmas, with Nick; but--but there is someone else too I would like to ask."

He looked at his son with an odd expression.

Chris could not imagine what this meant.

"It is Mistress Atherton," went on the other. "You see you know her a little--at least you have seen her; and there is Ralph. And from all that I have heard of her--her friendship with Master More and the rest, I think she might be the very friend for poor Meg. Do you think she would come, Chris?"

Chris was silent. He could not yet fully dissociate the thought of Beatrice from the memory of the time when she had taken Ralph's part.

Besides, was it possible to ask her under the circ.u.mstances?

"Then there was one more thing that I never told you;" went on his father, "there was no use in it. But I went to see Mistress Atherton when she was betrothed to Ralph. I saw her in London; and I think I may say we made friends. And she has very few now; she keeps herself aloof.

Folks are afraid of her too. I think it would be a kindness to her. I could not understand how she could marry Ralph; and now that is explained."

Chris was startled by this news. His father had not breathed a word of it before.

"She made me promise," went on Sir James, "to tell her if Ralph did anything unworthy. It was after the first news had reached her of what the Visitors were doing. And I told her, of course, about Rusper. I think we owe her something. And I think too from what I saw of her that she might make her way with your mother."

"It might succeed," said Chris doubtfully, "but it is surely difficult for her to come--"

"I know--yes--with Ralph and her betrothal. But if we can ask her, surely she can come. I can tell her how much we need her. I would send Meg to Great Keynes, if I dared, but I dare not. It is not so safe there as here; she had best keep quiet."