“Amen!” echoed the knight. “And long live the queen! Long live Queen Elizabeth!” he continued, having now got his formula by heart. And he swung his hat.
There was a cheer, a fairly loud cheer. But there was one who did not join in it, and that was Petronilla. She, listening at her lattice upstairs, began at once to think, as was her habit when any matter great or small fell out, whether this would affect the fortunes of a certain person far away. It might, it might not; she did not know. But the doubt so far entertained her that she came down to supper with a heightened color, not thinking in the least, poor girl, that the event might have dire consequences for others almost as dear to her, and nearer home.
Every year since his sudden departure a letter from Francis Cludde had come to Coton; a meager letter, which had passed through many hands, and reached Sir Anthony now through one channel, now through another. The knight grumbled and swore over these letters, which never contained an address to which an answer could be forwarded, nor said much, save that the writer was well and sent his love and duty, and looked to return, all being well. But, meager as they were, and loud as he swore over them, he put them religiously away in an oak-chest in his parlor; and another always put away for her share something else, which was invariably inclosed — a tiny swallow’s feather. The knight never said anything about the feather; neither asked the meaning of its presence, nor commented upon its absence when Petronilla gave him back the letter. But for days after each of these arrivals he would look much at his daughter, would follow her about with his eyes, be more regular in bidding her attend him in his walk, and more particular in seeing that she had the tidbits of the joint.
For Petronilla, it cannot be said, though I think in after times she would have liked to make some one believe it, that she wasted away. But she did take a more serious and thoughtful air in these days, which she never, God bless her, lost afterward. There came from Wootton Wawen and from Henley in Arden and from Cookhill gentlemen of excellent estate, to woo her. But they all went away disconsolate after drinking very deeply of Sir Anthony’s ale and strong waters. And some wondered that the good knight did not roundly take the jade to task and see her settled.
But he did not; so possibly even in these days he had other views. I have been told that, going up once to her little chamber to seek her, he found a very singular ornament suspended inside her lattice. It was no other than a common clay house-martin’s nest. But it was so deftly hung in a netted bag, and so daintily swathed in moss always green, and the Christmas roses and snowdrops and violets and daffodils which decked it in turn were always so pure and fresh and bright — as the knight learned by more than one stealthy visit afterward — that, coming down the steep steps, he could not see clearly, and stumbled against a cook-boy, and beat him soundly for getting in his way.
To return, however. The news of the queen’s death had scarcely been well digested at Coton, nor the mass for her soul, which Father Carey celebrated with much devotion, been properly criticised, before another surprise fell upon the household. Two strangers arrived, riding late one evening, and rang the great bell while all were at supper. Baldwin and the porter went to see what it was, and brought back a message which drew the knight from his chair, as a terrier draws a rat.
“You are drunk!” he shouted, purple in the face, and fumbling for the stick which usually leaned against his seat ready for emergencies. “How dare you bring cock-and-bull stories to me?”
“It is true enough!” muttered Baldwin sullenly: a stout, dour man, not much afraid of his master, but loving him exceedingly. “I knew him again myself.”
Sir Anthony strode firmly out of the room, and in the courtyard near the great gate found a man and a woman standing in the dusk. He walked up to the former and looked him in the face. “What do you here?” he said, in a strange, hard voice.
“I want shelter for a night for myself and my wife; a meal and some words with you — no more,” was the answer. “Give me this,” the stranger continued, “which every idle passer-by may claim at Coton End, and you shall see no more of me, Anthony.”
For a moment the knight seemed to hesitate. Then he answered, pointing sternly with his hand, “There is the hall and supper. Go and eat and drink. Or, stay!” he resumed. And he turned and gave some orders to Baldwin, who went swiftly to the hall, and in a moment came again. “Now go! What you want the servants will prepare for you.”
“I want speech of you,” said the newcomer.
Sir Anthony seemed about to refuse, but thought better of it. “You can come to my room when you have supped,” he said, in the same ungracious tone, speaking with his eyes averted.
“And you — do you not take supper?”
“I have finished,” said the knight, albeit he had eaten little. And he turned on his heel.
Very few of those who sat round the table and watched with astonishment the tall stranger’s entrance knew him again. It was thirteen years since Ferdinand Cludde had last sat there; sitting there of right. And the thirteen years had worked much change in him. When he found that Petronilla, obeying her father’s message, had disappeared, he said haughtily that his wife would sup in her own room; and with a flashing eye and curling lip, bade Baldwin see to it. Then, seating himself in a place next Sir Anthony’s, he looked down the board at which all sat silent. His sarcastic eye, his high bearing, his manner — the manner of one who had gone long with his life in his hand — awed these simple folk. Then, too, he was a Cludde. Father Carey was absent that evening. Martin Luther had one of those turns, half-sick, half-sullen, which alternated with his moods of merriment; and kept his straw pallet in some corner or other. There was no one to come between the servants and this dark-visaged stranger, who was yet no stranger.
He had his way and his talk with Sir Anthony; the latter lasting far into the night and producing odd results. In the first place, the unbidden guest and his wife stayed on over next day, and over many days to come, and seemed gradually to grow more and more at home. The knight began to take long walks and rides with his brother, and from each walk and ride came back with a more gloomy face and a curter manner. Petronilla, his companion of old, found herself set aside for her uncle, and cast, for society, on Ferdinand’s wife, the strange young woman with the brilliant eyes, whose odd changes from grave to gay rivaled Martin Luther’s; and who now scared the girl by wild laughter and wilder gibes, and now moved her to pity by fits of weeping or dark moods of gloom. That Uncle Ferdinand’s wife stood in dread of her husband, Petronilla soon learned, and even began to share this dread, to shrink from his presence, and to shut herself up more and more closely in her own chamber.
There was another, too, who grew to be troubled about this time, and that was Father Carey. The good-natured, easy priest received with joy and thankfulness the news that Ferdinand Cludde had seen his errors and re-entered the fold. But when he had had two or three interviews with the convert, his brow, too, grew clouded, and his mind troubled. He learned to see that the accession of the young Protestant queen must bear fruit for which he had a poor appetite. He began to spend many hours in the church — the church which he had known all his life — and wrestled much with himself — if his face were any index to his soul. Good, kindly man, he was not of the stuff of which martyrs are made; and to be forced, pushed on, and goaded into becoming a martyr against one’s will — well, the Father’s position was a hard one. As was that in those days of many a good and learned clergyman bred in one church, and bidden suddenly, on pain of losing his livelihood, if not his life, to migrate to another.
The visitors had been in the house a month — and in that month an observant eye might have noted much change, though all things in seeming went on as before — when the queen’s orders enjoining all priests to read the service, or a great part of it, in English, came down, being forwarded by the sheriff to Father Carey. The missive arrived on a Friday, and had been indeed long expected.
“What shall you do?” Ferdinand asked Sir Antho
ny.
“As before!” the tall old man replied, gripping his staff more firmly. It was no new subject between them. A hundred times they had discussed it already, even as they were now discussing it on the terrace by the fish-pool, with the church which adjoins the house full in view across the garden. “I will have no mushroom faith at Coton End,” the knight continued warmly. “It sprang up under King Henry, and how long did it last? A year or two. It came in again under King Edward, and how long did it last? A year or two. So it will be again. It will not last, Ferdinand.”
“I am of that mind,” the younger man answered, nodding his head gravely.
“Of course you are!” Sir Anthony rejoined, as he rested one hand on the sundial. “For ten generations our forefathers have worshiped in that church after the old fashion — and shall it be changed in my day? Heaven forbid! The old fashion did for my fathers; it shall do for me. Why, I would as soon expect that the river yonder should flow backward as that the church which has stood for centuries, and more years to the back of them than I can count, should be swept away by these Hot Gospelers! I will have none of them! I will have no new-fangled ways at Coton End!”
“Well, I think you are right!” the younger brother said. By what means he had brought the knight to this mind without committing himself more fully, I cannot tell. Yet so it was. Ferdinand showed himself always the cautious doubter. Father Carey even must have done him that justice. But — and this was strange — the more doubtful he showed himself, the more stubborn grew his brother. There are men so shrewd as to pass off stones for bread; and men so simple-minded as to take something less than the word for the deed.
“Why should it come in our time?” cried Sir Anthony fractiously.
“Why indeed?” quoth the subtle one.
“I say, why should it come now? I have heard and read of the sect called Lollards who gave trouble a while ago. But they passed, and the church stood. So will these Gospelers pass, and the church will stand.”
“That is our experience certainly,” said Ferdinand.
“I hate change!” the old man continued, his eyes on the old church, the old timbered house — for only the gateway tower at Coton is of stone — the old yew trees in the churchyard. “I do not believe in it, and, what is more, I will not have it. As my fathers have worshiped, so will I, though it cost me every rood of land! A fig for the Order in Council!”
“If you really will not change with the younger generations — —”
“I will not!” replied the old knight sharply. “There is an end of it!”
To-day the Reformed Church in England has seen many an anniversary, and grown stronger with each year; and we can afford to laugh at Sir Anthony’s arguments. We know better than he did, for the proof of the pudding is in the eating. But in him and his fellows, who had only the knowledge of their own day, such arguments were natural enough. All time, all experience, all history and custom and habit, as known to them, were on their side. Only it was once again to be the battle of David and the Giant of Gath.
Sir Anthony had said, “There is an end of it!” But his companion, as he presently strolled up to the house with a smile on his saturnine face, well knew that this was only the beginning of it. This was Friday.
On the Sunday, a rumor of the order having gone abroad, a larger congregation than usual streamed across the Chase to church, prepared to hear some new thing. They were disappointed. Sir Anthony stalked in as of old, through the double ranks of people waiting at the door to receive him; and after him Ferdinand and his wife, and Petronilla and Baldwin, and every servant from the house save a cook or two and the porter. The church was full. Seldom had such a congregation been seen in it. But all passed as of old. Father Carey’s hand shook, indeed, and his voice quavered; but he went through the ceremony of the mass, and all was done in Latin. A little change would have been pleasant, some thought. But no one in this country place on the borders of the forest held very strong views. No bishop had come heretic-hunting to Coton End. No abbey existed to excite dislike by its extravagance or by its license or by the swarm of ragged idlers it supported. Father Carey was the most harmless and kindest of men. The villagers did not care one way or the other. To them Sir Anthony was king. And if any one felt tempted to interfere, the old knight’s face, as he gazed steadfastly at the brass effigy of a Cludde, who had fallen in Spain fighting against the Moors, warned the meddler to be silent.
And so on that Sunday all went well. But some one must have told tales, for early in the week there came a strong letter of remonstrance from the sheriff, who was an old friend of Sir Anthony, and of his own free will, I fancy, would have winked. But he was committed to the Protestants, and bound to stand or fall with them. The choleric knight sent back an answer by the same messenger. The sheriff replied, the knight rejoined — having his brother always at his elbow. The upshot of the correspondence was an announcement on the part of the sheriff that he should send his officers to the next service, to see that the queen’s order was obeyed; and a reply on the part of Sir Anthony that he should as certainly put the men in the duck-pond. Some inkling of this state of things got abroad, and spread as a September fire flies through a wood; so that there was like to be such a congregation at the next service to witness the trial of strength, as would throw the last Sunday’s gathering altogether into the shade.
It was clear at last that Sir Anthony himself did not think that here was the end of it. For on that Saturday afternoon he took a remarkable walk. He called Petronilla after dinner, and bade her get her hood and come with him. And the girl, who had seen so little of her father in the last month, and who, what with rumors and fears and surmises, was eating her heart out, obeyed him with joy. It was a fine frosty day near the close of December. Sir Anthony led the way over the plank-bridge which crossed the moat in the rear of the house, and tramped steadily through the home farm toward a hill called the Woodman’s View, which marked the border of the forest. He did not talk, but neither was he sunk in reverie. As he entered each field he stood and scanned it, at times merely nodding, at times smiling, or again muttering a few words such as, “The three-acre piece! My father inclosed it!” or, “That is where Ferdinand killed the old mare!” or, “The best land for wheat on this side of the house!” The hill climbed, he stood a long time gazing over the landscape, eying first the fields and meadows which stretched away from his feet toward the house; the latter, as seen from this point, losing all its stateliness in the mass of stacks and ricks and barns and granaries which surrounded it. Then his eyes traveled farther in the same line to the broad expanse of woodland — Coton Chase — through which the road passed along a ridge as straight as an arrow. To the right were more fields, and here and there amid them a homestead with its smaller ring of stacks and barns. When he turned to the left, his eyes, passing over the shoulders of Barnt Hill and Mill Head Copse and Beacon Hill, all bulwarks of the forest, followed the streak of river as it wound away toward Stratford through luscious flood meadows, here growing wide, and there narrow, as the woodland advanced or retreated.
“It is all mine,” he said, as much to himself as to the girl. “It is all Cludde land as far as you can see.”
There were tears in her eyes, and she had to turn away to conceal them. Why, she hardly knew. For he said nothing more, and he walked down the hill dry-eyed. But all the way home he still looked sharply about, noting this or that, as if he were bidding farewell to the old familiar objects, the spinneys and copses — ay, and the very gates and gaps and the hollow trees where the owls built. It was the saddest and most pathetic walk the girl had ever taken. Yet there was nothing said.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE LAST MASS.
The north wall of the church at Coton End is only four paces from the house, the church standing within the moat. Isolated as the sacred building, therefore, is from the outer world by the wide-spreading Chase, and close-massed with the homestead, Sir Anthony had some excuse for considering it as much a part of his de
mesne as the mill or the smithy. In words he would have been willing to admit a distinction; but in thought I fancy he lumped it with the rest of his possessions.
It was with a lowering eye that on this Sunday morning he watched from his room over the gateway the unusual stream of people making for the church. Perchance he had in his mind other Sundays — Sundays when he had walked out at this hour, light of heart and kind of eye, with his staff in his fist and his glove dangling, and his dog at his heels; and, free from care, had taken pleasure in each bonnet doffed and each old wife’s “God bless ye, Sir Anthony!” Well, those days were gone. Now the rain dripped from the eaves — for a thaw had come in the night — and the bells, that could on occasion ring so cheerily, sounded sad and forlorn. His daughter, when she came, according to custom, bringing his great service-book, could scarcely look him in the face. I know not whether even then his resolution to dare all might not, at sound of a word from her, or at sight of her face, have melted like yesterday’s ice. But before the word could be spoken, or the eyes meet, another step rang on the stone staircase and brother Ferdinand entered.
“They are here!” he said in a low voice. “Six of them, Anthony, and sturdy fellows, as all Clopton’s men are. If you do not think your people will stand by you — —”
The knight fired at this suggestion. “What!” he burst out, turning from the window, “if Cludde men cannot meet Clopton men the times are indeed gone mad! Make way and let me come! Though the mass be never said again in Coton church, it shall be said to-day!” And he swore a great oath.
He strode down the stairs and under the gateway, where were arranged, according to the custom of the house on wet days, all the servants, with Baldwin and Martin Luther at their head. The knight stalked through them with a gloomy brow. His brother followed him, a faint smile flickering about the corners of his mouth. Then came Ferdinand’s wife and Petronilla, the latter with her hood drawn close about her face, Anne with her chin in the air and her eyes aglow. “It is not a bit of a bustle will scare her!” Baldwin muttered, as he fell in behind her, and eyed her back with no great favor.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 70