Читать книгу It Might Have Been - Emily Sarah Holt - Страница 7

“And yet, I do remember, some dim sense

Of vague presentiment

Swept o’er me, as beyond the gates we turned

To make the long descent.”

At the bridge-end, as they came up, were Milisent and her husband, with seven of their nine children—even little Fortune, but five years old, whom Milisent lifted into the coach and set on her Aunt Edith’s knee, saying “she should say all her life that she had sat in my Lord Dilston’s earache.” Then Milisent came in herself and sat down for a moment between her mother and Faith, whilst her husband talked with Aubrey, and all the children crowded about Hans, always a favourite with children. After a few minutes’ conversation, Robert came up to the coach-door with—“Time to go, Milly. We must not tarry Mother on her journey, for she is like to be weary enough ere she come to its end.”

Then Milisent broke down, and threw her arms around her mother, and cried—“O Mother, Mother, how shall I do without you? Must I never see you again?”

“My Milisent,” said Lady Louvaine, “I shall not carry God from thee. And thou wilt surely see me again, sweet heart, where we shall part no more for ever.”

For a few minutes Milisent wept as if her heart would break; then she wiped her eyes, and kissed them all round, only breaking down a little again when she came to her sister Edith.

“O Edith, darling sister, I never loved thee half well enough!”

Edith was calm now. “Send me the other half in thy letters, Milly,” she replied, “and I will return it to thee.”

“Ay, we can write betimes,” said Milisent, looking a little comforted. Then to her niece—“Now, Lettice, I look to thee for all the news. The first day of every month shall we begin to look out for a letter at Mere Lea; and if my sister cannot write, then must thou. Have a care!”

“So I will, Aunt,” said Lettice.

Milisent alighted with a rather brighter look—she was not wont to look any thing but bright—Robert took his leave and then came all the cousins pouring in to say good-bye. So the farewells were spoken, and they went on their journey; but as far as they could see until hidden by the hill round which they drove, Milisent’s handkerchief was waving after them.

Lady Louvaine bore the journey better than her daughters had feared; and our friends deemed themselves very happy that during the whole of it, they were not once overturned, and only four times stuck in the mud. At the end of the fourth day, which was Friday, they came up to the door of the Hill House at Minster Lovel. And as they lumbered round the sweep with their six horses, Edith cried joyously—“Oh, there’s old Rebecca!”

To Edith Louvaine, a visit to the Hill House was in a sense coming home, for its owner, her father’s cousin, Joyce Morrell, had been to her almost a second mother. When people paid distant visits in the sixteenth century, it was not for a week’s stay, but for half a year, or at least a quarter. During many years it had been the custom that visits of this length should be exchanged between Selwick Hall and the Hill House at Minster Lovel alternately, at the close of every two years. But Edith, who was Aunt Joyce’s special favourite, had paid now and then a visit between-times; and when, as years and infirmities increased, the meetings were obliged to cease for the elders, Edith’s yearly stay of three or four months with the old and lonely cousin had become an institution instead of them. Her feeling, therefore, was much like that of a daughter of the house introducing her relatives to her own home; for Lady Louvaine was the only other of the party to whom the Hill House had been familiar in old times.

Its owner, the once active and energetic old lady, now confined to her couch by partial paralysis, had been called Aunt Joyce by the Louvaines of the second generation ever since their remembrance lasted. To the younger ones, however, she was a stranger; and they watched with curious eyes their Aunt Edith’s affectionate greeting of the old servant Rebecca, who had guarded and amused her as a baby, and loved her as a girl. Rebecca, on her part, was equally glad to see her.

“Run you in, Mrs. Edith, my dear,” said she; “you’ll find the mistress in the Credence Chamber. Eh, she has wearied for you!—Good evening, Madam, and I’m fain to see your Ladyship again. Would you please to allow of my help in ’lighting?”

While Rebecca and Hans assisted her mother to descend, Edith ran into the house with as light and fleet a step as if she were fourteen instead of forty, and entered a large, low chamber, hung with dark leather hangings, stamped in gold, where a bright lamp burned on a little table, and on a low couch beside it lay an old lady, covered over with a fur coverlet. She had a pleasant, kindly old face, with fresh rose-colour in her cheeks, and snow-white hair; and her face lighted up when she saw Edith, like a candle set in a dark window. Edith ran to her, and cast her arms about her, and she said, “My Edith, mine own dear child!” as tenderly as if she had been her own mother.

Lady Louvaine followed her daughter, leaning on Hans and Rebecca, who took her up to the couch, and set her down in a large chair furnished with soft cushions, which stood close beside, as if it were there on purpose. She laid her hand upon Joyce’s, who fondled it in both hers. Then Joyce gave a little laugh.

“Lettice, dost thou wonder to hear me laugh?” asked she. “I seemed like as if I saw, all at once, that sunshine afternoon when thou earnest first over from the Manor House, sent of my Lady Norris to make friends with us. Dost remember?”

“And thou earnest tripping lightly down the stairs, clad of a russet gown, and leddest me up to see Anstace. ‘Do I remember it!’ Ah, Joyce, my sister, there be sore changes since that day!”

“Be there so?” said Joyce, and smiled brightly enough. “A good number of miles nearer Home, Lettice, and a good number of treasures laid up for both of us, where neither moth nor rust shall hurt them. My treasures are all there which are not likewise thine. And now let me see the new gems in thy jewel-box. Who art thou, my maid?”

“I am Lettice Murthwaite, Madam, if you please.”

“My dear heart, I do not please to be called Madam. I am thine Aunt Joyce. Come here and kiss me, if thou wilt.”

Lettice knelt down by the couch, and kissed the old lady.

“There is not much of Nell here, Lettice,” said Joyce to Lady Louvaine. “ ’Tis her father the child is like. Now then, which of these two lads is Aubrey—he with the thinking brow, or he with the restless eyes?”

Lady Louvaine called Aubrey, and he came up.

“Why, thou art like nobody,” said Aunt Joyce. “Neither Ned nor Faith, nor any of Ned’s elders. Lettice, where is Faith? hast not brought her withal?”

Faith was in the hall, listening to a lecture from Temperance, embellished by such elegancies as “Stuff and nonsense!” and “Listen to reason!” which ended up at last with “Lancaster and Derby!” and Faith came slowly in, with her everlasting handkerchief at her eyes.

“Nay, Faith, sweet heart, no tears!” cried the old lady. “Sure there’s nought to weep for this even, without thou art so dog-weary that thou canst not keep them back.”

“Mistress Morrell, I wish you good even,” said Temperance, coming in after her sister. “If you’ll but learn Faith to keep that handkerchief of hers in her pocket, you’ll have done the best work ever you did since we saw you last in Derwent-dale. She’s for ever and the day after a-fretting and a-petting, for why she’d better tell you, for I’m a Dutchman if I can make out.”

Aunt Joyce looked from one to the other.

“So unfeeling!” came Faith’s set form, from behind the handkerchief. “And me a poor widow!”

The old lady’s face went very grave, and all the cheeriness passed out of it.

“Faith, you are not the only widow in the chamber,” she said gently. “Temperance, my dear, she is weary, maybe.”

“She hasn’t got a bit of call,” rejoined Temperance. “Sat all day long in my Lord Dilston’s smart caroche, lolling back in the corner, just like a feather-bed. Mistress Joyce, ’tis half ill-temper and half folly—that’s what it is.”

“Well, well, my dear, we need not judge our neighbours.—Edith, my child, thou knowest the house as well as I; wilt thou carry thy friends above? Rebecca hath made ready My Lady’s Chamber for my Lady,”—with a smile at her old friend—“and the Fetterlock Chamber for Faith and Temperance. The Old Wardrobe is for thee and Lettice, and the lads shall lie in the Nursery.”

Names to every room, after this fashion, were customary in old houses. The party were to stay at Minster Lovel for four days, from Friday to Tuesday, and then to pursue their journey to London.

In the Old Wardrobe, a pleasant bedchamber on the upper floor, Lettice washed off the dust of the journey, and changed her clothes when the little trunk came up which held the necessaries for the night. Then she tried to find her way to the Credence Chamber, and—as was not very surprising—lost it, coming out into a long picture-gallery where she was at once struck and entranced by a picture that hung there. It represented a young girl about her own age, laid on a white couch, and dressed in white, but with such a face as she had never seen on any woman in this life. It was as white as the garments, with large dark eyes, wherein it seemed to Lettice as if her very soul had been melted; a soul that had gone down into some dreadful deep, and having come up safe, was ever afterwards anxiously ready to help other souls out of trouble. She would have thought the painter meant it for an angel, but that angels are not wont to be invalids and lie on couches. Beside this picture hung another, which reminded her of her Grandfather Louvaine; but this was of a young man, not much older than Aubrey, yet it had her grandfather’s eyes, which she had seen in none else save her Aunt Edith. Now Lettice began to wonder where she was, and how she should find her way; and hearing footsteps, she waited till they came up, when she saw old Rebecca.

“Why, my dear heart, what do you here?” said she kindly.

“Truly, I know not,” the youthful visitor answered. “I set forth to go down the stairs, and missed the right turning, as I guess. But pray you, Rebecca, ere you set me in the way, tell me of whom are these two pictures?”

“Why,” said she, “can you not guess? The one is of your own grandfather, Sir Aubrey Louvaine.”

“Oh, then it is Grandfather when he was young. But who is this, Rebecca? It looks like an angel, but angels are never sick, and she seems to be lying sick.”

“There be angels not yet in Heaven, Mistress Lettice,” softly answered the old servant. “And if you were to live to the age of Methuselah, you’d never see a portrait of one nearer the angels than this. ’Tis a picture that old Squire—Mistress Joyce’s father—would have taken, nigh sixty years since, of our angel, our Mistress Anstace, when she was none so many weeks off the golden gate. They set forth with her in a litter for London town, and what came back was her coffin, and that picture.”

“Was she like that?” asked Lettice, scarcely above her breath, for she felt as if she could not speak aloud, any more than in church.

“She was, and she was not,” said old Rebecca. “Them that knew her might be minded of her. She was like nothing in this world. But, my dear heart, I hear Mrs. Edith calling for you. Here be the stairs, and the Credence Chamber, where supper is laid, is the first door on your left after you reach the foot.”

On the Saturday evening, as they sat round the fire in the Credence Chamber, Edith asked Aunt Joyce if old Dr. Cox were still parson of Minster Lovel.

“Nay,” said she; “I would he were. We have a new lord and new laws, the which do commonly go together.”

“What manner of lord?” inquired Edith.

“And what make of laws?” said Temperance.

“Bad, the pair of them,” said the old lady.

“Why, is he a gamester or drunkard?” asked Lady Louvaine.

“Or a dumb dog that cannot bark?” suggested Temperance.

“Well, I’d fain have him a bit dumber,” was Aunt Joyce’s answer. “At least, I wish he’d dance a bit less.”

“Dance!” cried Edith.

“Well!” said Aunt Joyce, “what else can you call it, when a man measures his steps, goes two steps up and bows, then two steps down and bows, then up again one step, with a great courtesy, and holds up his hands as if he were astonished—when there’s nothing in the world to astonish him except his own foolish antics?”

“But where doth he this?” said Lady Louvaine: “here in the chamber, or out of door?”

“Dear heart! in the church.”

“But for why?”

“Prithee ask at him, for I can ne’er tell thee.”

“Did you ne’er ask him, Aunt?” said Edith.

“For sure did I, and gat no answer that I could make aught of: only some folly touching Catholic practice, and the like. And, ‘Master Twinham,’ said I, ‘I know not well what you would be at, but I can tell you, I lived through the days of Queen Mary, and, if that be what you mean by Catholic practices, they are practices we don’t want back again.’ Well, he mumbled somewhat about being true to the Church, and such like: but if he be an honest man, my shoes be made of Shrewsbury sweet bread. We tumbled all such practices out of the Church, above forty years gone; and what’s more, we’ll not stand to have them brought in again, though there be some may try.”

“They will not bring any such folly in while the Queen liveth, I guess,” answered Edith.

“Amen! but the Queen, God bless her! is seventy this year.”

“Would you have her live for ever, Aunt Joyce?” asked Aubrey.

“Would she could!” she answered. “As to this fellow, I know not what he’ll be at next. He told me to my face that a Papist was better than a Puritan. ‘Well, Mr. Twinham,’ said I, ‘you may be a Papist, but I am a Puritan, and there I tarry till I find somewhat better.’ ”

“Why, Joyce!” said Lady Louvaine, smiling, “thou wert not wont to call thyself a Puritan, in the old days when thou and Bess Wolvercot used to pick a crow betwixt you over Dr. Meade’s surplice at Keswick.”

“No, I wasn’t,” said she. “But I tell you, Lettice, there be things human nature cannot bear. A clean white surplice and Christ’s Gospel is one thing, and a purple vestment and an other Gospel is another. And if I’m to swallow the purple vestment along with the white surplice, I’ll have neither. As to old Bess, dear blessed soul! she’s in her right place, where she belongs; and if I may creep in at a corner of Heaven’s door and clean her golden sandals, I shall be thankful enough, the Lord knows.”

“But, Mrs. Morrell! sure you never mean to say that surplices be giving place to purple vestments down this road!” cried Temperance in much horror.

“Children,” said the old lady very solemnly, “we two, in God’s mercy, shall not live to see what is coming, but very like you will. And I tell you, all is coming back which our fathers cast forth into the Valley of Hinnom, and afore you—Temperance, Faith, and Edith—be old women, it will be set up in the court of the Temple. Ay, much if it creep not into the Holy of Holies ere those three young folks have a silver hair. The Devil is coming, children: he’s safe to be first; and in his train are the priests and the Pope. They are all coming: and you’ll have to turn them out again, as your grandfathers did. And don’t you fancy that shall be an easy task. It’ll be the hardest whereto you ever set your shoulders. God grant you win through it! There are two dangers afore you, and when I say that, I mean not the torture-chamber and the stake. Nay, I am thinking of worser dangers than those—snares wherein feet are more easily trapped, a deal. List to me, for ere many years be over, you will find that I speak truth. The lesser danger is if the Devil come to you in his black robes, and offer to buy you with that which he guesseth to be your price—and that shall not be the same for all: a golden necklace may tempt one, and a place at Court another, and a Barbary mare a third. But worse, far worse, is the danger when the Devil comes in his robes of light; when he gilds his lie with a cover of outside truth; when he quotes Scripture for his purpose, twisting it so subtilely that if the Spirit of God give you not the answer, you know not how to answer him. Remember, all you young ones, and Aubrey in especial, that no man can touch pitch and not be denied. ‘Evil communications corrupt good manners:’ and they corrupt them worst and quickest when you see not that they be evil. If you think the scales be falling from your eyes, make very sure that they are not growing on them. And you can do that only by keeping very close to God’s footstool and to God’s Word. Be sure of this: whatsoever leads you away from that Book leads you wrong. I care not what it be—King or Pope, priest or layman, blind faith or blind reason—he that neglects and sets aside the Word of God, for whatever cause, and whatever thing he would put in his place—children, his ways incline unto Hell, and his paths unto the dead. Go not after him, nor follow him. Mark my words, and see, twenty and yet more forty years hence, if they come not true.”

Aubrey whispered to Lettice, “What made her pick out me in ‘especial,’ trow? I’m not about to handle no pitch.”

But Hans said, with his gravest face, “I thank you, Madam,” and seemed to be thinking hard about something all the rest of the evening.

On the Sunday morning, all went to church except the two old ladies, who could honestly plead infirmity.

When they came out, Lettice, who was burning to speak her mind, exclaimed—“Saw you ever a parson so use himself, Aubrey? Truly I know not how to specify it—turning, and twisting, and bowing, and casting up of his hands and eyes—it well-nigh made me for to laugh!”

“Like a merry Andrew or a cheap Jack,” laughed Aubrey.

“I thought his sermon stranger yet,” said Hans, “nor could I see what it had to do with his text.”

“What was his text?” inquired heedless Aubrey.

“ ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,’ ” repeated Hans.

“Ay, and all he did, the hour through,” cried Lettice, “was to bid us obey the Church, and hear the Church, and not run astray after no novelties in religion. And the Church is not the Lord our God, neither is religion, so far as I see.”

“I mind Sir Aubrey once saying,” added Hans, “that when a bride talked ever of herself, and nothing of her bridegroom, it was a very ill augury of the state of her heart.”

“But saw you those two great candlesticks on the holy table?—what for be they?” said Lettice.

“Oh, they be but ornaments of the church,” answered Aubrey, carelessly.

“But we have none such in Keswick Church: and what is the good of candlesticks without candles?”

“The candles will come,” quietly replied Hans.

“Ah! you’re thinking of what the old gentlewoman said last night—confess, Master Sobersides!” said Aubrey.

“I have thought much on it,” answered Hans, who walked along, carrying the ladies’ prayer-books; for the road being dirty, they had enough to do in holding up their gowns. “And I think she hath the right.”

“Hans, I marvel how old thou wert when thou wert born!” said Aubrey.

“I think, very like, about as old as you were,” said Hans.

“Well, Mr. Louvaine, you are a complete young gentleman!” cried his Aunt Temperance, looking back at him. “To suffer three elder gentlewomen to trudge in the mire, and never so much as offer to hand one of them! Those were not good manners, my master, when I was a young maid—but seeing how things be changed now o’ days, maybe that has gone along with them. Come hither at once, thou vagrant, and give thine hand to thy mother, like a dutiful son as thou shouldest be, and art not.”

“Oh, never mind me!” sighed Faith. “I have given over expecting such a thing. I am only a poor widow.”

“Madam,” apologised Hans, very red in the face, “I do truly feel ashamed that I have no better done my duty, and I entreat you not—”

“I was not faulting thee, lad,” said Temperance. “We have already laden thee with books; and it were too much to look for thee to do thine own duty and other folks’ too. It’s this lazy lad I want. I dare be bound he loveth better to crack jests with his cousins than to be dutiful to his old mother and aunts.”

“Temperance, I am only thirty-nine,” said Faith in an injured voice. “I am the youngest of us three.”

“Oh deary me! I ask your pardon,” cried Temperance, with a queer set of her lips. “Yes, Madam, you are; Edith is an old woman of forty, and I a decrepit creature of forty-five; but you are a giddy young thing of thirty-nine. I’ll try to mind it, at least till your next birthday.”

Lettice laughed, and Aunt Temperance did not look angry, though she pulled a face at her. Edith smiled, and said pleasantly—

“Come, Aubrey, hand thy mother on my side; I will walk with Lettice and Hans.”

“Aunt Edith,” said Lettice, “pray you, why be those candlesticks on the holy table, with never a candle in them?”

“I cannot tell, Lettice,” replied she; “I fear, if the parson dared, there would be candles in them, and belike will, ere long.”

“Think you Aunt Joyce is right in what she said last night?”

“I fear so, Lettice,” she answered very gravely. “We have not yet seen the last, I doubt, of Satan and his Roman legion.”

The same afternoon, Lettice had a talk with old Rebecca, which almost frightened her. She went up to the gallery for another look at the two pictures, and Rebecca passing by, Lettice begged that if she were not very busy, she would tell her something about them. In reply she heard a long story, which increased her reverential love for the dead grandfather, and made her think that “Cousin Anstace” must have been an angel indeed. Rebecca had lived in the Hill House for sixty years, and she well remembered her mistress’s sister.

“Mind you Queen Mary’s days, Rebecca?” asked Lettice.

“Eh, sweet heart!” said the old servant. “They could ne’er be forgot by any that lived in them.”

“Saw you any of the dreadful burnings?”

“Ay, did I, Mrs. Lettice,” said she—“even the head and chief of them all, of my Lord’s Grace of Canterbury. I saw him hold forth his right hand in the flame, that had signed his recantation: and after all was over, and the fire out, I drew nigh with the crowd, and beheld his heart entire, uncharred amongst the ashes. Ah my mistress! if once you saw such a sight as that, you could never forget it, your whole life thereafter.”

“It must have been dreadful, Rebecca!” said Lettice.

“Well, it was, in one way,” she answered: “and yet, in another, it was right strengthening. I never felt so strong in the faith as that hour, and for some while after. It was like as if Heaven had been opened to me, and I had a glimpse of the pearly portals, and the golden street, and the white waving wings of the angels as he went in.”

“Saw you the Bishops burned, Rebecca—Dr. Ridley and Dr. Latimer?”

“I did not, Mrs. Lettice; yet have I seen them both, prisoners, led through Oxford streets. Dr. Ridley was a man with a look so grave that it was well-nigh severe: but Dr. Latimer could break a jest with any man, and did, yea, with his very judges.”

“Were you ever in any danger, Rebecca?—or Mrs. Morrell?”

“I never was, Mrs. Lettice; but my good mistress was once well-nigh taken of the catchpoll (constable). You ask her to tell you the story, how she came at him with the red-hot poker. And after that full quickly she packed her male, and away to Selwick to Sir Aubrey and her Ladyship, where she tarried hid until Queen Elizabeth came in.”

“Think you there shall ever be such doings in England again?”

“The Lord knoweth,” and old Rebecca shook her white head. “There’s not a bit of trust to be put in them snakes of priests and Jesuits and such like: not a bit! Let them get the upper hand again, and we shall have the like times. Good Lord, deliver us from them all!”

Lettice went down, intending to ask Aunt Joyce to tell her the story of the red-hot poker; but she never thought of it again, so absorbed was she with what the two old ladies were saying as she came in. They did not hear her enter: and the first word she heard made her so desirous of more, that she crept as softly as she could to a seat. Curiosity was her besetting sin.

“She used not to be thus,” said Lady Louvaine. “Truly, I know not what hath thus sorrowfully changed the poor child; but I would some means might be found to undo the same. Even for some years after Ned’s death, I mind not this change; it came on right slowly and by degrees.”

Lettice felt pretty sure that “she” was Aunt Faith.

“ ’Tis weakness, I suppose,” said Lady Louvaine, in a questioning tone.

“Ay, we are all weak some whither,” replied Aunt Joyce; “and Faith’s weakness is a sort to show. She is somewhat too ready to nurse her weaknesses, and make pets of them. ’Tis bad enough for a woman to pet her own virtues; but when she pets her vices, ’tis a hard thing to better her. But, Lettice, there is a strong soul among you—a rare soul, in good sooth; and there is one other, of whose weakness, and what are like to be its consequences, I am far more in fear than of Faith’s.”

“Nay, who mean you?” asked Lady Louvaine in a perplexed voice.

“I mean the two lads—Hans and Aubrey.”

“Hans is a good lad, truly.”

“Hans has more goodness in him than you have seen the end of, by many a mile. But Aubrey!”

“You reckon not Aubrey an ill one, I hope?”

“By which you mean, one that purposes ill? Oh no, by no means. He is a far commoner character—one that hath no purpose, and so being, doth more real ill than he that sets forth to do it of malicious intent.”

“Are you assured you wrong not the lad, Joyce, in so saying?”

“If I do, you shall full shortly know it. I trust it may be so. But he seems to me to have a deal more of Walter in him than Ned, and to be right the opposite of our Aubrey in all main conditions.”

“Ah,” sighed the widow, in a very tender tone, “there can be no two of him!” Then after a little pause, “And what sayest thou to Lettice—my little Lettice?”

The concealed listener pricked up both her ears.

Aunt Joyce gave a little laugh. “Not so very unlike an other Lettice that once I knew,” said she. “Something less like to fall in the same trap, methinks, and rather more like to fall in an other.”

“Now, tell me what other?”

“I mean, dear heart, less conceit of her favour (beauty), and more of her wisdom. A little over-curious and ready to meddle in matters that concern her not. A good temper, methinks, and more patience than either of her aunts on the father’s side: as to humility—well, we have none of us too much of that.”

“Joyce, wouldst thou like to have us leave Lettice a while with thee? She could wait on thee and read to thee, and be like a daughter to thee. I will, if thou wouldst wish it.”

“Nay, that would I not, Lettice, for the child’s own sake. It were far better for her to go with you. There is an offer thou couldst make me, of that fashion, that my self-denial were not equal to refuse. So see thou make it not.”

“What, now? Not Hans, trow?”

“Edith.”

“O Joyce!”

“Ay, dear heart, I know. Nay, fear not. I’ll not take the last bud off the old tree. But, thyself saved, Lettice, there is none left in all the world that I love as I love her. Perchance she will find it out one day.”

“Joyce, my dear sister—”

“Hold thy peace, Lettice. I’ll not have her, save now and again on a visit. And not that now. Thou shouldst miss her sorely, in settling down in thy new home. Where shall it be?”

“In the King’s Street of Westminster. My good Lord Oxford hath made earnest with a gentleman, a friend of his, that hath there an estate, to let us on long lease an house and garden he hath, that now be standing empty.”

“Ay, that is a pleasant, airy place, nigh the fields. At what rent?”

“Twenty-four shillings the quarter. Houses be dearer there than up in Holborn, yet not so costly as in the City; and it shall not be far for Aubrey, being during the day in the Court with his Lord.”

“Lettice, you shall need to pray for that boy.”

“What shall I ask for him, Joyce?”

“ ‘That he may both perceive and know what things he ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same.’ Don’t let him rule you. He is very like to try it, the only man in a family of women—for he shall make little account of Hans Moriszoon, though there is more sense in Hans’s little finger than in all Aubrey’s brains. If I can see into the future, Aubrey is not unlike to push you o’er, and Hans to pick you up again. Have a care, Lettice. You remember when Walter was in Court, with my Lord Oxford?”

“O Joyce!”

Lettice wondered what they meant, for she had never heard of her Uncle Walter being with Lord Oxford. She had never much liked Uncle Walter. He was always rather stiff and stern, and he used to come down sharply on niece or nephew if they did any thing wrong, yet not like her Grandfather Murthwaite, who was slow and solemn, and seemed to mourn over their evil deeds; but Uncle Walter was quick and sharp, and he snapped at them. They were under the impression that he never could have done a naughty thing in the whole course of his life, because he always seemed so angry and astonished to see the children do so. Lettice, therefore, was curious to hear about Uncle Walter.

“Well,” said Aunt Joyce, “not exactly the same, yet too like. He’ll take the colour of his company, like Walter: and he shall be evenly free-handed with his money—”

Lettice stared, though there was nothing to stare at but Aunt Joyce’s big grey cat, curled up in the window-seat Uncle Walter a spendthrift! she could not even imagine it. Did she not remember her Cousin Jane’s surprise when her father gave her a shilling for a birthday present? When Lettice listened again, Aunt Joyce was saying—

“He’s no standing-ground. Whatso be the fantasy of the moment, after it he goes; and never stays him to think what is like to come thereof, far less what might come. But that which causes me fear more for him than Walter, is the matter of friends. Walter was not one to run after folks; he was frighted of lowering himself in the eyes of them he knew, but methinks he ran not after them as Aubrey doth. Hast ever watched a dog make friends of other dogs? for Aubrey hath right the dog’s way. After every dog he goes, and gives a sniff at him; and if the savour suit, he’s Hail, fellow, well met! with him the next minute. Beware that Aubrey makes no friend he bringeth not home, so far as you can: and yet, Beware whom he bringeth, for Lettice’ sake. ’Tis hard matter: ‘good for the head is evil for the neck and shoulders.’ To govern that lad shall ask no little wisdom; and if thou have it not, thou knowest where to ask. I would his mother had more, or that his father had lived. Well! that’s evil wishing; God wist better than I. But the lad ’ll be a sore care to thee, and an heavy.”

“I fear so much, indeed,” said Lady Louvaine, and she sighed.

Then Edith came in, and exclaimed, “What, all in the dark?” and Aunt Joyce bade her call Rebecca to bring light. So the naughty Lettice slipped out, and in five minutes more came boldly in, and no one knew what she had heard.

As they sat round the fire that evening, Aunt Joyce asked suddenly, “Tell me, you three young folks, what be your ambitions? What desire you most of all things to be, do, or have?—Lettice?”

“Why, Aunt, I can scarce tell,” said Lettice, “for I never thought thereupon.”

“She should choose to be beautiful, of course,” suggested Aubrey. “All women do.”

“Marry come up, my young Master!” cried his Aunt Temperance.

“Oh, let him be, Temperance,” answered Aunt Joyce. “He knows a deal more about women than thou and I; ’tis so much shorter a time since he was one.”

Temperance laughed merrily, and Aubrey looked disconcerted.

“I think I care not much to be beautiful, Aunt, nor rich,” said Lettice: “only sufficient to be not uncomely nor tried of poverty. But so far as I myself can tell what I do most desire is to know things—all things that ever there be to know. I would like that, I think, above all.”

“To know God and all good things were a very good and wise wish, Lettice,” was Aunt Joyce’s answer; “but to know evil things, this was the very blunder that our mother Eve made in Eden. Prithee, repeat it not. Now, Aubrey, what is thy wish?”

“I would like to be a rich king,” said he. “Were I a fairy queen, Aubrey, I would not give thee thy wish: for thou couldst scarce make a worser. ‘They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare,’ and they that seek power be little behind them. ‘Godliness is great riches,’ lad, ‘if a man be content with that he hath.’ ”

“Methinks, Aunt, that is one of your favourite texts,” remarked Edith.

“Ay,” said she, “it is. ‘Enough is as good as a feast.’ Hans, ’tis thy turn.”

Hans had sat gravely looking into the fire while the others talked. Now he looked up, and answered—

“Madam, I am ambitious more than a little. I desire to do God’s will, and to be content therewith.”

“Angels could win no further,” answered Aunt Joyce, with much feeling in her voice. “Ay, lad; thou hast flown at highest game of all.”

“Why, Aunt!” said Aubrey, “never heard I a meaner wish. Any man could do that.”

“Prithee do it, then,” replied Aunt Joyce, “and I for one shall be full fain to see thee.”

“No man ever yet fulfilled that wish,” added Edith, “save only Christ our Lord.”

Lady Louvaine sighed somewhat heavily; and Joyce asked, “What is it, dear heart?”

“Ah!” said she, “thy question, Joyce, and the children’s answers, send me back a weary way, nigh sixty years gone, to the time when I dwelt bowerwoman with my Lady of Surrey, when one even the Lady of Richmond willed us all to tell our desires after this manner. I mind not well all the answers, but I know one would see a coronation, and an other fair sights in strange lands: and I, being then young and very foolish, wished for a set of diamond, and my Lady of Richmond herself to be a queen. But my Aubrey’s wish was something like Hans’s, for he said he desired to be an angel. Ah me! nigh sixty years!”

“He hath his wish,” responded Aunt Joyce softly. “And methinks Hans is like to have his also, so far as mortal man may compass it. There be some wishes, children, that fulfil themselves: and aspirations after God be of that sort. ‘He meeteth them that remember Him.’ Lettice, I trust thou mayest have thy wish to a reasonable length, so far as is good for thee: and, Aubrey, I can but desire the disappointment of thine, for it were very evil for thee. But thou, Hans Floriszoon, ‘go in peace; and the God of Israel grant thee thy petition that thou hast asked of Him.’ ”

It was hard work for those two old friends to part, each knowing that it was almost certain they would never again meet until they clasped hands in the Paradise of God. When it came to the farewell, Lady Louvaine knelt down, though with difficulty—for Joyce could not raise herself—and the adopted sisters exchanged one long fervent embrace.

“O Joyce, my friend, my sister! my one treasure left to me from long ago! We shall never kiss again till—”

Lettice Louvaine’s voice was lost in sobs.

“Maybe, dear heart—maybe not. Neither thou nor I can know the purposes of God. If so, farewell till the Golden City!—and if thou win in afore me at the pearly portals, give them all my true love, and say I shall soon be at home.”

“Farewell, love! There is none to call me Lettice but thee, left now.”

“Nay, sweet heart, not so. ‘I have called thee by thy name.’ There will be One left to call thee ‘Lettice,’ until He summon thee by that familiar name to enter the Holy City.”

So they journeyed on towards London. It was on the afternoon of the twenty-fourth of March that they sighted the metropolis at last from the summit of Notting Hill. They drove down the Oxford road, bounded on either side by green hedges, with here and there a house—the busy Oxford Street of our day—turned down the Hay Market to Charing Cross, and passed by Essex Gate and its companion portal, the Court Gate, through “the Court,” now known as Whitehall, emerging upon “the King’s Street.” There was no Parliament Street in those days.

As they turned into King Street, it struck the elders of the party that there seemed to be an unusual stir of some kind. The streets were more crowded than usual, men stood in little knots to converse, and the talk was manifestly of a serious kind. Lady Louvaine bade Edith look out and call Aubrey, whom she desired to inquire of some responsible person the meaning of this apparent commotion. Aubrey reined in his horse accordingly, as he passed a gentleman in clerical attire, which at that date implied a cassock, bands, and black stockings. Had Aubrey known it, the narrowness of the bands, the tall hat, the pointed shoes, and the short garters, also indicated that the clergyman in question was a Puritan.

“Pray you, Sir, is there news of import come?” inquired the youth: “or what means this ado?”

The clergyman stopped suddenly, and looked up at his questioner.

“What means it?” he said sadly. “Friend, the great bell of Paul’s was rung this morrow.”

“I cry you mercy, Sir. Being a countryman, I take not your meaning.”

“The great bell of Paul’s,” explained the stranger, “tolls never but for one thing, and hath been silent for over forty years.”

“Good lack! not the plague, I trust?” cried Aubrey.

“Would it were no worse! Nay, this means that we are sheep without a shepherd—that she who hath led us for three-and-forty years, who under God saved us from Pope and Spaniard, can lead us no more for ever. Lad, no worser news could come to Englishmen than this. Queen Elizabeth hath passed away.”

So, under the shadow of that dread sorrow, and that perilous uncertain future, they entered their new home.