Come Rack, Come Rope

by Robert Hugh Benson

  Robin, too, was never very far from her thoughts. In some manner she put the two together in her mind. She wondered whether they would ever travel together. It was her hope that her old friend might become another Campion himself some day.

  A log rolled from its place in the fire, scattering sparks. She stooped to put it back, glancing first at the bed to see if her mother were disturbed; and, as she sat back again, she heard the blowing of a horse and a man’s voice, fierce and low, from beyond the windows, bidding the beast hold himself up.

  She was accustomed now to such arrivals. They came and went like this, often without warning; it was her business to look at any credentials they bore with them, and then, if all were well, to do what she could—whether to set them on their way, or to give them shelter. A room was set aside now, in the further wing, and called openly and freely the “priest’s room,”—so great was their security.

  She got up from her seat and went out quickly on tiptoe as she heard a door open and close beneath her in the house, running over in her mind any preparations that she would have to make if the rider were one that needed shelter.

  As she looked down the staircase, she saw a maid there, who had run out from the buttery, talking to a man whom she thought she knew. Then he lifted his face, and she saw that she was right: and that it was Mr. Babington.

  She came down, reassured and smiling; but her breath caught in her throat as she saw his face.… She told the maid to be off and get supper ready, but he jerked his head in refusal. She saw that he could hardly speak. Then she led him into the hall, taking down the lantern that hung in the passage, and placing it on the table. But her hand shook in spite of herself.

  “Tell me,” she whispered.

  He sat down heavily on a bench.

  “It is all over,” he said. “The bloody murderers! … They were gibbeted three days ago.”

  The girl drew a long, steady breath. All her heart cried “Robin.”

  “Who are they, Mr. Babington?”

  “Why, Campion and Sherwine and Brian. They were taken a month or two ago.… I had heard not a word of it, and … and it ended three days ago.”

  “I … I do not understand.”

  The man struck his hand heavily on the long table against which he leaned. He appeared one flame of fury; courtesy and gentleness were all gone from him.

  “They were hanged for treason, I tell you.… Treason! … Campion! … By God! we will give them treason if they will have it so!”

  All seemed gone from Marjorie except the white, splashed face that stared at her, lighted up by the lantern beside him, glaring from the background of darkness. It was not Robin … not Robin … yet——

  The shocking agony of her face broke through the man’s heart-broken fury, and he stood up quickly.

  “Mistress Marjorie,” he said, “forgive me.… I am like a madman. I am on my way from Derby, where the news came to me this afternoon. I turned aside to tell you. I came to warn you. You must be careful. I am riding for London. My men are in the valley. Mistress Marjorie——”

  She waved him aside. The blood was beginning again to beat swiftly and deafeningly in her ears, and the word came back.

  “I … I was shocked,” she said; “… you must pardon me.… Is it certain?”

  He tore out a bundle of papers from behind his cloak, detached one with shaking hands and thrust it before her.

  She sat down and spread it on the table. But his voice broke in and interrupted her all the while.

  “They were all three taken together, in the summer.… I … have been in France; my letters never reached me.… They were racked continually.… They died all together; praying for the Queen … at Tyburn.… Campion died the first …”

  She pushed the paper from her; the close handwriting was no more to her than black marks on the paper. She passed her hands over her forehead and eyes.

  “Mistress Marjorie, you look like death. See, I will leave the paper with you. It is from one of my friends who was there.…”

  The door was pushed open, and the servant came in, bearing a tray.

  “Set it down,” said Marjorie, as coolly as if death and horror were as far from her as an hour ago.

  She nodded sharply to the maid, who went out again: then she rose and spread the food within the man’s reach. He began to eat and drink, talking all the time.

  As she sat and watched him and listened, remembering afterwards, as if mechanically, all that he said, she was contemplating something else. She seemed to see Campion, not as he had been three days ago, not as he was now … but as she had seen him in London—alert, brisk, quick. Even the tones of his voice were with her, and the swift merry look in his eyes.… Somewhere on the outskirts of her thought there hung other presences: the darkness, the blood, the smoking cauldron.… Oh! she would have to face these presently; she would go through this night, she knew, looking at all their terror. But just now let her remember him as he had been; let her keep off all other thoughts so long as she could.…

  II

  When she had heard the horse’s footsteps scramble down the little steep ascent in the dark, and then pass into silence on the turf beyond, she closed the outer door, barred it once more, and then went back straight into the hall, where the lantern still burned among the plates. She dared not face her mother yet; she must learn how far she still held control of herself; for her mother must not hear the news: the apothecary from Derby who had ridden up to see her this week had been very emphatic. So the girl must be as usual. There must be no sign of discomposure. To-night, at least, she would keep her face in the shadow. But her voice? Could she control that too?

  After she had sat motionless in the cold hall a minute or two, she tested herself.

  “He is dead,” she said softly. “He is quite dead, and so are the others. They——”

  But she could not go on. Great shuddering seized on her; she shook from head to foot.…

  Later that night Mrs. Manners awoke. She tried to move her head, but the pain was shocking, and still half asleep, she moaned aloud.

  Then the curtains moved softly, and she could see that a face was looking at her.

  “Margy! Is that you?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Move my head; move my head. I cannot bear——”

  She felt herself lifted gently and strongly. The struggle and the pain exhausted her for a minute, and she lay breathing deeply. Then the ease of the shifted position soothed her.

  “I cannot see your face,” she said. “Where is the light?”

  The face disappeared, and immediately, through the curtains, the mother saw the light. But still she could not see the girl’s face. She said so peevishly.

  “It will weary your eyes. Lie still, Mother, and go to sleep again.”

  “What time is it?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Are you not in bed?”

  “Not yet, Mother.”

  The sick woman moaned again once or twice, but thought no more of it. And presently the deep sleep of sickness came down on her again.

  They rose early in those days in England; and soon after six o’clock, as Janet had seen nothing of her young mistress, she opened the door of the sleeping-room and peeped in.… A minute later Marjorie’s mind rose up out of black gulfs of sleep, in which, since her falling asleep an hour or two ago, she had wandered, bearing an intolerable burden, which she could neither see nor let fall, to find the rosy-streaked face of Janet, all pinched with cold, peering into her own. She sat up, wide awake, yet with all her world still swaying about her, and stared into her maid’s eyes.

  “What is it? What time is it?”

  “It is after six, mistress. And the mistress seems uneasy. I——”

  Marjorie sprang up and went to the bed.

  III

  On the evening of that day her mother died.

  There was no priest within reach. A couple of men had ridden out early, dispatched by Marjorie within half an hour o
f her awaking—to Dethick, to Hathersage, and to every spot within twenty miles where a priest might be found, with orders not to return without one. But the long day had dragged out: and when dusk was falling, still neither had come back. The country was rain-soaked and all but impassable, she learned later, across valley after valley, where the streams had risen. And nowhere could news be gained that any priest was near; for, as a further difficulty, open inquiry was not always possible, in view of the news that had come to Booth’s Edge last night. The girl had understood that the embers were rising again to flame in the south; and who could tell but that a careless word might kindle the fire here, too. She had been urged by Anthony to hold herself more careful than ever, and she had been compelled to warn her messengers.

  It was soon after dusk had fallen—the heavy dusk of a December day—that her mother had come back again to consciousness. She opened her eyes wearily, coming back, as Marjorie had herself that morning, from that strange realm of heavy and deathly sleep, to the pale phantom world called “life”; and agonising pain about the heart stabbed her wide awake.

  “O Jesu!” she screamed.

  Then she heard her daughter’s voice, very steady and plain, in her ear.

  “There is no priest, Mother dear. Listen to me.”

  “I cannot! I cannot! … Jesu!”

  Her eyes closed again for torment, and the sweat ran down her face. The slow poison that had weighted and soaked her limbs so gradually these many months past was closing in at last upon her heart, and her pain was gathering to its last assault. The silent, humorous woman was changed into one twitching, uncontrolled incarnation of torture.

  Then again the voice began:

  “Jesu, Who didst die for love of me—upon the Cross—let me die—for love of Thee.”

  “Christ!” moaned the woman more softly.

  “Say it in your heart, after me. There is no priest. So God will accept your sorrow instead. Now then——”

  Then the old words began—the old acts of sorrow and love and faith and hope, that mother and daughter had said together, night after night, for so many years. Over and over again they came, whispered clear and sharp by the voice in her ear; and she strove to follow them. Now and again the pain closed its sharp hands upon her heart so cruelly that all that on which she strove to fix her mind, fled from her like a mist, and she moaned or screamed, or was silent with her teeth clenched upon her lip.

  “My God—I am very sorry—that I have offended Thee.”

  “Why is there no priest? … Where is the priest?”

  “Mother, dear, listen. I have sent for a priest … but none has come. You remember now? … You remember that priests are forbidden now——”

  “Where is the priest?”

  “Mother, dear. Three priests were put to death only three days ago in London—for … for being priests. Ask them to pray for you.… Say, Edmund Campion pray for me. Perhaps … perhaps——”

  The girl’s voice died away.

  For, for a full minute, an extraordinary sensation rested on her. It began with a sudden shiver of the flesh, as sharp and tingling as water, dying away in long thrills amid her hair—that strange advertisement that tells the flesh that more than flesh is there, and that the world of spirit is not only present, but alive and energetic. Then, as it passed, the whole world, too, passed into silence. The curtains that shook just now hung rigid as sheets of steel; the woman in the bed lay suddenly still, then smiled with closed eyes. The pair of maids, kneeling out of sight beyond the bed, ceased to sob; and, while the seconds went by, as real as any knowledge can be in which the senses have no part, the certain knowledge deepened upon the girl who knelt, arrested in spite of herself, that a priestly presence was here indeed.…

  Very slowly, as if lifting great weights, she raised her eyes, knowing that there, across the tumbled bed, where the darkness of the room showed between the parted curtains, the Presence was poised. Yet there was nothing there to see—no tortured, smoke-stained, throttling face—ah! that could not be—but neither was there the merry, kindly face, with large cheerful eyes and tender mouth smiling; no hand held the curtains that the face might peer in. Neither then nor at any time in all her life did Marjorie believe that she saw him; yet neither then nor in all her life did she doubt he had been there while her mother died.

  Again her mother smiled—and this time she opened her eyes to the full, and there was no dismay in them, nor fear, nor disappointment; and she looked a little to her left, where the parted curtains showed the darkness of the room.…

  Then Marjorie closed her eyes, and laid her head on the bed where her mother’s body sank back and down into the pillows. Then the girl slipped heavily to the floor, and the maids sprang up screaming.

  IV

  It was not till two hours later that Mr. Simpson arrived. He had been found at last at Hathersage, only a few miles away, as one of the men, on his return ride, had made one last inquiry before coming home; and there he ran into the priest himself in the middle of the street. The priest had taken the man’s horse and pushed on as well as he could through the dark, in the hopes he might yet be in time.

  Marjorie came to him in the parlour downstairs. She nodded her head slowly and gravely.

  “It is over,” she said; and sat down.

  “And there was no priest?”

  She said nothing.

  She was in her house-dress, with the hood drawn over her head as it was a cold night. He was amazed at her look of self-control; he had thought to find her either collapsed or strainedly tragic: he had wondered as he came how he would speak to her, how he would soothe her, and he saw there was no need.

  She told him presently of the sudden turn for the worse early that morning as she herself fell asleep by the bedside; and a little of what had passed during the day. Then she stopped short as she approached the end.

  “Have you heard the news from London?” she said. “I mean, of our priests there?”

  His young face grew troubled, and he knit his forehead.

  “They are in ward,” he said; “I heard a week ago.… They will banish them from England—they dare not do more!”

  “It is all finished,” she said quietly.

  “What!”

  “They were hanged at Tyburn three days ago—the three of them together.”

  He drew a hissing breath, and felt the skin of his face tingle.

  “You have heard that?”

  “Mr. Babington came to tell me last night. He left a paper with me: I have not read it yet.”

  He watched her as she drew it out and put it before him. The terror was on him, as once or twice before in his journeyings, or as when the news of Mr. Nelson’s death had reached him—a terror which shamed him to the heart, and which he loathed yet could not overcome. He still stared into her pale face. Then he took the paper and began to read it.

  Presently he laid it down again. The sick terror was beginning to pass; or, rather, he was able to grip it; and he said a conventional word or two; he could do no more. There was no exultation in his heart; nothing but misery. And then, in despair, he left the subject.

  “And you, mistress,” he said, “what will you do now? Have you no aunt or friend——”

  “Mistress Alice Babington once said she would come and live with me—if … when I needed it. I shall write to her. I do not know what else to do.”

  “And you will live here?”

  “Why, more than ever!” she said, smiling suddenly. “I can work in earnest now.”

  CHAPTER VI

  I

  IT WAS on a bright evening in the summer that Marjorie, with her maid Janet, came riding down to Padley, and about the same time a young man came walking up the track that led from Derby. In fact, the young man saw the two against the skyline and wondered who they were. Further, there was a group of four or five walking on the terrace below the house, that saw both the approaching parties, and commented upon their coming.

  To be precise, there we
re four persons in the group on the terrace, and a man-servant who hung near. The four were Mr. John FitzHerbert, his son Thomas, his son’s wife, and, in the midst, leaning on Mrs. FitzHerbert’s arm, was old Sir Thomas himself, and it was for his sake that the servant was within call, for he was still very sickly after his long imprisonment, in spite of his occasional releases.

  Mr. John saw the visitors first.

  “Why, here is the company all arrived together,” he said. “Now, if anything hung on that——” his son broke in, uneasily.

  “You are sure of young Owen?” he said. “Our lives will all hang on him after this.”

  His father clapped him gently on the shoulder.

  “Now, now!” he said. “I know him well enough, from my lord. He hath made a dozen such places in this county alone.”

  Mr. Thomas glanced swiftly at his uncle.

  “And you have spoken with him, too, uncle?”

  The old man turned his melancholy eyes on him.

  “Yes; I have spoken with him,” he said.

  Five minutes later Marjorie was dismounted, and was with him. She greeted old Sir Thomas with particular respect; she had talked with him a year ago when he was first released that he might raise his fines; and she knew well enough that his liberty was coming to an end. In fact, he was technically a prisoner even now; and had only been allowed to come for a week or two from Sir Walter Aston’s house before going back again to the Fleet.

  “You are come in good time,” said Sir John, smiling.

  “That is young Owen himself coming up the path.”

  There was nothing particularly noticeable about the young man who a minute later was standing before them with his cap in his hand. He was plainly of the working class; and he had over his shoulder a bag of tools. He was dusty up to the knees with his long tramp. Mr. John gave him a word of welcome; and then the whole group went slowly together back to the house, with the two men following. Sir Thomas stumbled a little going up the two or three steps into the hall. Then they all sat down together; the servant put a big flagon and a horn tumbler beside the traveller, and went out, closing the doors.