Come Rack, Come Rope

by Robert Hugh Benson

  “Mistress Manners,” he said, “I wish to have a word with you privately.”

  Marjorie, trembling at his presence, turned a wavering face to her friend; and Alice, before the other could speak, rose up, and went out, with Janet following.

  “Janet——” cried the girl.

  “If you please,” said the old man, with such a decisive air that she hesitated. Then she nodded at her maid; and a moment later the door closed.

  III

  “I have two matters to speak of,” said the squire abruptly, sitting down in the chair that Alice had left; “the first concerns you closely; and the other less closely.”

  She looked at him, summoning all her power to appear at her ease.

  He seemed far older than when she had last spoken with him, perhaps five years ago; and had grown a little pointed beard; his hair, too, seemed thinner—such of it as she could see beneath the house-cap that he wore; his face, especially about his blue, angry-looking eyes, was covered with fine wrinkles, and his hands were clearly the hands of an old man, at once delicate and sinewy. He was in a dark suit, still with his cloak upon him; and in low boots. He sat still as upright as ever, turned a little in his chair, so as to clasp its back with one strong hand.

  “Yes, sir?” she said.

  “I will begin with the second first. It is of my son Robin: I wish to know what news you have of him. He hath not written to me this six months back. And I hear that letters sometimes come to you from him.”

  Marjorie hesitated.

  “He is very well, so far as I know,” she said.

  “And when is he to be made priest?” he demanded sharply.

  Marjorie drew a breath to give herself time; she knew that she must not answer this; and did not know how to say so with civility.

  “If he has not told you himself, sir,” she said, “I cannot.”

  The old man’s face twitched; but he kept his manners.

  “I understand you, mistress.…” But then his wrath overcame him. “But he must understand he will have no mercy from me, if he comes my way. I am a magistrate, now, mistress, and——”

  A thought like an inspiration came to the girl; and she interrupted; for she longed to penetrate this man’s armour.

  “Perhaps that was why he did not tell you when he was to be made priest,” she said.

  The other seemed taken aback.

  “Why, but——”

  “He did not wish to think that his father would be untrue to his new commission,” she said, trembling at her boldness and yet exultant too; and taking no pains to keep the irony out of her voice.

  Again that fierce twitch of the features went over the other’s face; and he stared straight at her with narrowed eyes. Then a change again came over him; and he laughed, like barking, yet not all unkindly.

  “You are very shrewd, mistress. But I wonder what you will think of me when I tell you the second matter, since you will tell me no more of the first.”

  He shifted his position in his chair, this time clasping both his hands together over the back.

  “Well; it is this in a word,” he said: “It is that you had best look to yourself, mistress. My lord Shrewsbury even knows of it.”

  “Of what, if you please?” asked the girl, hoping she had not turned white.

  “Why, of the priests that come and go hereabouts! It is all known; and her Grace hath sent a message from the Council——”

  “What has this to do with me?”

  He laughed again.

  “Well; let us take your neighbours at Padley. They will be in trouble if they do not look to their goings. Mr. FitzHerbert——”

  But again she interrupted him. She was determined to know how much he knew. She had thought that she had been discreet enough, and that no news had leaked out of her own entertaining of priests; it was chiefly that discretion might be preserved that she had set her hands to the work at all. With Padley so near it was thought that less suspicion would be aroused. Her name had never yet come before the authorities, so far as she knew.

  “But what has all this to do with me, sir?” she asked sharply. “It is true that I do not go to church, and that I pay my fines when they are demanded. Are there new laws, then, against the old faith?”

  She spoke with something of real bitterness. It was genuine enough; her only art lay in her not concealing it; for she was determined to press her question home. And, in his shrewd, compelling face, she read her answer even before his words gave it.

  “Well, mistress; it was not of you that I meant to speak—so much as of your friends. They are your friends, not mine. And as your friends, I thought it to be a kindly action to send them an advertisement. If they are not careful, there will be trouble.”

  “At Padley?”

  “At Padley, or elsewhere. It is the persons that fall under the law, not places!”

  “But, sir, you are a magistrate; and——”

  He sprang up, his face aflame with real wrath.

  “Yes, mistress; I am a magistrate: the commission hath come at last, after six months’ waiting. But I was friend to the FitzHerberts before ever I was a magistrate, and——”

  Then she understood; and her heart went out to him. She, too, stood up, catching at the table with a hiss of pain as she threw her weight on the bruised foot. He made a movement towards her; but she waved him aside.

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. Audrey, with all my heart. I had thought that you meant harm, perhaps, to my friends and me. But now I see——”

  “Not a word more! not a word more!” he cried harshly, with a desperate kind of gesture. “I shall do my duty none the less when the time comes——”

  “Sir!” she cried out suddenly. “For God’s sake do not speak of duty—there is another duty greater than that. Mr. Audrey——”

  He wheeled away from her, with a movement she could not interpret. It might be uncontrolled anger or misery, equally. And her heart went out to him in one great flood.

  “Mr. Audrey. It is not too late. Your son Robin——”

  Then he wheeled again; and his face was distorted with emotion.

  “Yes, my son Robin! my son Robin! … How dare you speak of him to me? … Yes; that is it—my son Robin—my son Robin!”

  He dropped into the chair again, and his face fell upon his clasped hands.

  She was pondering deeply all the way as she rode home. Mistress Alice was one of those folks who so long as they are answered in words are content; and Marjorie so answered her. And all the while she thought upon Robin, and his passionate old father, and attempted to understand the emotions that fought in the heart that had so disclosed itself to her—its aged obstinacy, its loyalty and its confused honourableness. She knew very well that he would do what he conceived to be his duty with all the more zeal if it were an unpleasant duty; and she thanked God that it was not for a good while yet that the lad would come home a priest.

  CHAPTER VIII

  I

  THE NEWS came to her as she sat in the garden over her needlework on a hot evening in June. There it was as cool as anywhere in the countryside. She sat at the top of the garden, where her mother and she had sat with Robin so long before; the breeze that came over the moor bore with it the scent of the heather; and the bees were busy in the garden flowers about her.

  It was first the gallop of a horse that she heard; and even at that sound she laid down her work and stood up. But the house below her blocked the most of her view; and she sat down again when she heard the dull rattle of the hoofs die away again. When she next looked up a man was running towards her from the bottom of the garden, and Janet was peeping behind him from the gate into the court. As she again stood up, she saw that it was Dick Sampson.

  He was so out of breath, first with his ride and next with his run up the steep path, that for a moment or two he could not speak. He was dusty, too, from foot to knee; his cap was awry and his collar unbuttoned.

  “It is Mr. Thomas, mistress,” he gasped presently
. “I was in Derby and saw him being taken to the gaol.… I could not get speech with him.… I rode straight up to Padley, and found none there but the servants, and them knowing nothing of the matter. And so I rode on here, mistress.”

  He was plainly all aghast at the blow. Hitherto it had been enough that Sir Thomas was in ward for his religion; and to this they had become accustomed. But that the heir should be taken, too, and that without a hint of what was to happen, was wholly unexpected. She made him sit down, and presently drew from him the whole tale.

  Mr. Anthony Babington, his master, was away to London again, leaving the house in Derby in the hands of the servants. He then—Dick Sampson—was riding out early to take a horse to be shod, and had come back through the town-square, when he saw the group ride up to the gaol door near the Friar Gate. He, too, had ridden up to ask what was forward, and had been just in time to see Mr. Thomas taken in. He had caught his eye, but had feigned not to know him. Then the man had attempted to get at what had happened from one of the fellows at the door, but could get no more from him than that the prisoner was a known and confessed recusant, and had been laid by the heels according to orders, it was believed, sent down by the Council. Then Dick had ridden slowly away till he had turned the corner, and then, hot foot for Padley.

  “And I heard the fellow say to one of his company that an informer was coming down from London on purpose to deal with Mr. Thomas.”

  Marjorie felt a sudden pang; for she had never forgotten the one she had set eyes on in the Tower.

  “His name?” she said breathlessly. “Did you hear his name?”

  “It was Topcliffe, mistress,” said Dick indifferently. “The other called it out.”

  Marjorie sat silent. Not only had the blow fallen more swiftly than she would have thought possible, but it was coupled with a second of which she had never dreamed. That it was this man, above all others, that should have come; this man, who stood to her mind, by a mere chance, for all that was most dreadful in the sinister forces arrayed against her—this brought misery down on her indeed. For, besides her own personal reasons for terror, there was, besides, the knowledge that the bringing of such a man at all from London on such business meant that the movement beginning here in her own county was not a mere caprice.

  II

  She sent Dick off after a couple of hours’ rest, during which once more he had told his story to Mistress Alice, with a letter to Mr. Thomas’s wife, who, no doubt, would have followed her lord to Derby. She had gone apart with Alice, while Dick ate and drank, to talk the affair out, and had told her of Topcliffe’s presence, at which news even the placid face of her friend looked troubled; but they had said nothing more on the point, and had decided that a letter should be written in Mistress Babington’s name, offering Mrs. FitzHerbert the hospitality of Babington House, and any other services she might wish. Further, they had decided that the best thing to do was to go themselves to Derby next day, in order to be at hand; since Mr. John was in London, and the sooner Mrs. Thomas had friends with her, the better.

  “They may keep him in ward a long time,” said Mistress Alice, “before they bring him into open court—to try his courage. That is the way they do. The charge, no doubt, will be that he has harboured and assisted priests.”

  Marjorie lay awake that night, staring through the summer dusk at the tall press which hid so much beside her dresses. Ever since she had first offered her lover to God and let him go from her, it appeared as if God had taken her at her word, and accepted in an instant that which she offered so tremblingly. There was no drawing back now, even had she wished it. And she wished it indeed, though she did not will it; she knew that she must stand in her place, now more than ever, when the blow had fallen so near. Now more than ever must she be discreet and resolute, since Padley itself was fallen, in effect, if not in fact; and Booth’s Edge, in this valley at least, was the one hope of hunted men. She must stand, then, in her place; she must govern her face and her manner more perfectly than ever, for the sake of that tremendous Cause.

  III

  Derby was, indeed, astir as they rode in, with the servants and the baggage following behind, on the late afternoon of the next day. They had ridden by easy stages, halting at Dethick for dinner, where the Babingtons’ house already hummed with dismay at the news that had come from Derby last night. Mr. Anthony was away, and all seemed distracted.

  They rode in by the North road, seeing for the last mile or two of their ride the towering spire of All Saints’ Church high above the smoke of the houses; they passed the old bridge half a mile from the market-place, near the ancient camp; and even here overheard a sentence or two from a couple of fellows that were leaning on the parapet, that told them what was the talk of the town. It was plain that others besides the Catholics understood the taking of Mr. Thomas FitzHerbert to be a very significant matter.

  Babington House stood on the further side of the market-place from that on which they entered, and Alice was for going there through side streets.

  “They will take notice if we go straight through,” she said. “It is cheese-market to-day.”

  “They will take notice in any case,” said Marjorie. “It will be over the town to-morrow that Mistress Babington is here, and it is best, therefore, to come openly, as if without fear.”

  And she turned to beckon the servants to draw up closer behind.

  The square was indeed crowded as they came in. From all the country round, and especially from Dovedale, the farmers came in on this day, or sent their wives, for the selling of cheeses; and the small oblong of the market—the smaller from its great Conduit and Cross—was full with rows of stalls and carts, with four lanes only left along the edges by which the traffic might pass; and even here the streams of passengers forced the horses to go in single file.

  Mistress Babington rode first, preceded by one of the Dethick men whom they had taken up on their way, and who had pushed forward when they came into the town to clear the road; and Mistress Manners rode after her. The men stood aside as the cavalcade began to go between the booths, and the most of them saluted Mistress Babington. But as they were almost out of the market they came abreast one of the inns from whose wide-open doors came a roar of voices from those that were drinking within, and a group that was gathered on the step stopped talking as the party came up. Marjorie glanced at them, and noticed there was an air about two or three of the men that was plainly town-bred; there was a certain difference in the cut of their clothes and the way they wore them. Then she saw two or three whispering together, and the next moment came a brutal shout. She could not catch the sentence, but she heard the word “Papist” with an adjective, and caught the unmistakable bullying tone of the man. The next instant there broke out a confusion: a man dashed up the step from the crowd beneath, and she caught a glimpse of Dick Sampson’s furious face. Then the group bore back, fighting, into the inn door; the Dethick servant leapt off his horse, leaving it in some fellow’s hands, and vanished up the step; there was a rush of the crowd after him, and then the way was clear in front, over the little bridge that spanned Bramble brook.

  When she drew level with Alice, she saw her friend’s face, pale and agitated.

  “It is the first time I have ever been cried at,” she said. “Come; we are nearly home. There is St. Peter’s spire.”

  “Shall we not——” began Marjorie.

  “No, no” (and the pale face tightened suddenly). “My fellows will give them a lesson. The crowd is on our side as yet.”

  IV

  As they rode in under the archway that led in beside the great doors of Babington House, three or four grooms ran forward at once. It was plain that their coming was looked for with some eagerness.

  Alice’s manner seemed curiously different from that of the quiet woman who had sat so patiently beside Marjorie in the manor among the hills: a certain air of authority and dignity sat on her now that she was back in her own place.

  “Is Mrs. FitzHerbert here?”
she asked from the groom who helped her to the ground.

  “Yes, mistress; she came from the inn this morning, and——”

  “Well?”

  “She is in a great taking, mistress. She would eat nothing, they said.”

  Alice nodded.

  “You had best be off to the inn,” she said, with a jerk of her head. “A London fellow insulted us just now, and Sampson and Mallow——”

  She said no more. The man who held her horse slipped the reins into the hands of the younger groom who stood by him, and was away and out of the court in an instant. Marjorie smiled a little, astonished at her own sense of exultation. The blows were not to be all one side, she perceived. Then she followed Alice into the house.

  As they came through into the hall by the side-door that led through from the court where they had dismounted, a figure was plainly visible in the dusky light, going to and fro at the further end, with a quick, nervous movement. The figure stopped as they advanced, and then darted forward, crying out piteously:

  “Ah! you have come, thank God! thank God! They will not let me see him.”

  “Hush! hush!” said Alice, as she caught her in her arms.

  “Mr. Bassett has been here,” moaned the figure, “and he says it is Topcliffe himself who has come down on the matter.… He says he is the greatest devil of them all; and Thomas——”

  Then she burst out crying again.

  It was an hour before they could get the full tale out of her. They took her upstairs and made her sit down, for already a couple of faces peeped from the buttery, and the servants would have gathered in another five minutes; and together they forced her to eat and drink something, for she had not tasted food since her arrival at the inn yesterday; and so, little by little, they drew the story out.