On the analogy of the famous apple,—“there ain’t going to be no” preface, “not nohow.” Children do not read prefaces, so anything of a prefatory nature that might interest them is put at the beginning of chapter one.
As for the grown-ups the story is not written for grown-ups, and if they want to know why it begins with such a gruesome first chapter, let them ask the children. Children like the horrors first and the end all bright. Many grown-ups like the tragedy at the end. But perhaps the children are right and the grown-ups are standing on their heads. Besides they can skip the first chapter; it is only a prologue.
Sweet children of demurest air,
Pale blossoms woven through your hair,
On shifting rainbows gathering,
Endowed with love’s engaging mien
And crowding lips that toward me lean,
Through little hands, outstretched between
In sympathetic wondering.
Children, ye cannot understand,
Floating in that enchanted land,
The pathos of our helplessness;
And yet your winsome faces bear,
Though ye yourselves are unaware,
The antidote of our despair,—
Exorcists of our hopelessness.
Children of Fancy: The Guelder Roses.
THE great ship Lusitania was nearing Queenstown on May 7th, 1915, when a terrible explosion occurred, and in fifteen minutes she had sunk. Among some 1700 adults and 500 children were a lecturer on art and archaeology and a little girl, with whom he had made friends on board. About 700 people escaped and these two were both eventually picked up out of the water. When they reached the land there was no2 one left to look after her; so he first took her across to her relatives in England and then she went to live in the home of the archaeologist, in Scotland, who had three little boys of his own but no little girls.
Archaeologists do not know anything about girls’ story books, and he may have been misinformed when he was told that girls’ books were too tame and that most girls preferred to read the more exciting books of their brothers. However, this made him decide himself to write a story for the little girl, which should be full of adventures. It was frankly a melodramatic story, a story of love and hate, and he chose the period of the Reformation, so as to have two parties bitterly opposed to each other; but, except for dramatic purposes, religious problems were as far as possible left out.
One difficulty was as to whether the characters should speak in old English; but, as that might have made it hard to read, only a few old words and phrases were introduced here and there, just, as it were, to give a flavour.
Afterwards the author was asked to publish the story “for precocious girls of thirteen,” as it was delightfully phrased; that is to say, for girls of thirteen and upwards and perhaps for grown up people, but hardly for superior young ladies of about seventeen; and this is the story:
Father Laurence, the parish priest of Middleton, was returning home from Holwick on a dark night in the late spring. He had come from the bedside of a dying woman and the scene was unpleasantly impressed on his mind. Sarah Moulton had certainly not been a blessing3 to her neighbours, but, in spite of that, he felt sorry for the delicate child left behind, as he did not see what was to become of it. He felt very troubled, too, about the poor creature, herself, for was not his task the cure of souls? Not that Sarah Moulton was much of a mother; but perhaps any kind of a mother was better than nothing, and the poor child had loved her; yet, after she had received the viaticum, she had given vent to the most frightful curses on her neighbours. “If I cannot get the better of Janet Arnside in life,” she had screamed, “I will get the better of her when I am dead. I will haunt her and drive her down the path to Hell, I will never let her rest, I will....” and with these words on her lips the soul had fled from her body. He sighed a little wearily. He was famished and worn for he had previously been a long tramp nearly to Lunedale. “I do my best,” he said, “but I am afraid the task is too difficult for me. I wish there were some one better than myself in Upper Teesdale: poor Sarah!”
Father Laurence’ way led through the churchyard, but clear as his conscience was, he had never been able to free himself from a certain fear in passing through it on a dark night. Could it be true that the spirits of the departed could plague the living? Of course it could not; and yet, somehow, he was not able to rid himself of the unwelcome thought. As he passed through the village and drew nearer to the church, he half resolved to go round. No, that was cowardly and absurd. He would not allow idle superstitions to get the better of him.
But when he approached the gate he hesitated and his heart began to beat violently. What was that unearthly screech in the darkness of the night? He crossed himself4 devoutly, however, and said a Paternoster and stepped through the wicket gate. “‘Libera nos a malo,’ yes, deliver us from evil, indeed,” he said, as, dimly on the sky line he saw a shadowy figure with long gaunt arms stretched to the sky.
He crossed himself again, when a ghoulish laugh rang through the still night air. He turned a little to the left, but the figure came swiftly toward him. He wanted to run, but duty bade him refrain. His heart beat yet more violently as the figure approached and at length he stood still, unable to move.
The figure came closer, and closer still, stretching out its arms, and finally a harsh voice said: “Is that you, Father Laurence? Ha! Ha! I told you Sarah Moulton would die. You need not tell me about it.”
It was old Mary, “Moll o’ the graves,” as the folk used to call her. Father Laurence felt a little reassured, but she was not one whom anybody would wish to meet on a dark night, least of all in a churchyard.
“What is the matter, Mary? Why are you not in your bed,” he asked; “disturbing honest folk at this time of night?”
“You let me alone,” she replied, “with your saints and your prayers and your Holy Mother. I go where I please and do as I please. I knew Sarah would die. I like folk to die,” she said with horrible glee; “and she cursed Janet Arnside, did she? A curse on them all, every one of them. I wish she would die too; ay, and that slip of a girl that Sarah has left behind. What are you shaking for?” she added. “Do you think I do not know what is going on? You have nothing to tell me;5 I assure you the powers are on our side. There is nothing like the night and the dark.”
“You are a wicked woman, Mary,” said the old priest sorrowfully, “and God will punish you one day. See you—I am going home; you go home too.”
“You may go home if you like,” said the old hag as he moved on, “and my curses go with you; but I stay here;” and she stood and looked after him as he faded into the darkness.
“Silly old dotard,” she growled; “I saw him at her bedside or ever I came along here. The blessed sacrament indeed; and much may it profit her! I wish now I had waited and seen what he did after she had gone; comforted that child, I expect! Fancy loving a mother like that! Ha! Ha! No, I am glad I came here and scared the pious old fool.”
She moved among the tombs and sat down near an open grave that had just been dug. “Pah! I am sick of their nonsense. Why cannot they leave folk in peace? I want to go my own way; why should I not go my own way? All my life they have been at me, ever since I was a little girl. My foolish old mother began it. Why should I not please myself? Well, she’s dead anyway! I like people to die. And now Mother Church is at me. Why should I think of other people, why should I always be holding myself in control? No, I let myself go, I please myself.”
“I have no patience with any of them,” she muttered, “and now there is a new one to plague me,” and “Moll o’ the graves” saw in her mind’s eye a slim, graceful girl of twelve, endowed with an unparalleled refinement6 of beauty. “What do they mean by bringing that child to Holwick Hall,” she continued, “as if things were not bad enough already,—a-running round and waiting on folk, a-tending the sick and all the rest of it? Let them die! I like them to die. Self-sacrifice and self-control forsooth! They say she is clever and well-schooled and mistress of herself and withal sympathetic. What’s the good of unselfishness and self-control? No, liberty, liberty—that’s the thing for you, Moll. Self-control, indeed!” and again the ghastly laugh rang through the night air. “Yes, liberty, Moll,—liberty. Are you not worth more than all their church-ridden priests and docile unselfish children? What avails unselfishness and affection? Father Laurence and Aline Gillespie, there’s a pair of them! No, hate is the thing, hate is better than love. Scandal and spite and jealousy—that’s true joy, that’s the true woman, Moll,” and she rubbed her hands with unholy mirth.
As she talked to herself the moon rose and gradually the churchyard became light. “Love!” she went on, “love! Yes, Oswald, that’s where they laid you,” she said, as she looked at the next place to the open grave. “Ah, but hate got the better of your love, for all that, fine big man that you were, a head taller than the rest of the parish, and all the girls after you, too!”
She looked at the side of the open grave, where the end of a bone protruded. She pulled it out. It was a femur of unusual size. “Yes, Oswald,” she repeated, “and that’s yours. You did not think I would be holding your thigh-bone these forty years after!
“Ha! you loved me, did you? I was a pretty lass then. Yes, you loved me, I know you loved me. You7 would have died for me, and I loved you, too. But little Sarah loved you and you loved her. I know you loved me most, but I would not have that. ‘I should have controlled myself,’ you say; ha! I was jealous and I hated you. Self-control and love;—no, no, liberty and hate, liberty and hate; and when you were ill I came to see you and I saw the love-light in your eyes. They thought you would get well. Of course you would have got well; but there you were, great big, strong man, weak as a child,—a child! I hate children. Was that it? You tried to push my hands off, as I pressed the pillow on your face, you tried; oh, you tried hard, and I laugh to think of it even now. How I longed to bury my fingers in your throat, but I knew they would leave marks.
“Yes, liberty and hate, ha! ha! I would do it again. See, Oswald!” and she took the brittle bone and viciously snapped it across her knee. “Self-control! love! unselfishness! Never! And that child up at the Hall, Oswald, I must send her after you. I have just frightened Sarah down to you. You can have her now, and that child shall come next. Hate is stronger than love. Liberty, self-will and hate must win in the end.”
The abandoned old wretch stood up and took her stick—she could not stand quite straight—and hobbled with uncanny swiftness across to a newly made child’s grave and began to scrape with her hands; but at that moment she heard the night-watchman coming along the lane; so she rose and walked back to Newbiggin, where she lived.
She opened the door and found the tinder box and struck a light, and then went to a corner where there was8 an old chest. She unlocked it and peered in and lifted out a bag and shook it. It was full of gold. “Yes,” she said, “money is a good thing, too. How little they know what ‘old Moll o’ the graves’ has got,—old, indeed, Moll is not old! Ah, could not that money tell some strange tales? Love and learning and self-control! Leave all that to the priests. Hate will do for me,—money and liberty are my gods.
“Aha, Aline Gillespie, you little fool, what do you mean by crossing my path? I was a pretty little girl once and you are not going to win the love of Upper Teesdale folk for nothing, I’ll warrant you.”
“I AM so tired of this rain,” said Audry, as she rose and crossed the solar and went to the tall bay window with its many mullions and sat down on the window seat. “It is three days since we have been able to get out and no one has seen the top of Mickle Fell for a week. The gale is enough to deafen one,” she added, “while the moat is like a stormy sea,—and just look at the mad dancers in the rain-rings on the water!”
The predecessor of the withdrawing room or drawing room.
It was a terrible day, the river was in spate indeed, carrying down great trees and broken fences and even, now and then, some unfortunate beast that had been swept away in the violence of the storm.
2 In torrent.
“The High Force must be a wonderful sight though,” she continued, “the two falls must be practically one in all this deluge.”
“I do not altogether mind the rain,” said her little friend; “there is something wonderful about it and I always rather like the sound of the wind; it has a nice eerie suggestion, and makes me think of delightful stories of fairies and goblins and strange adventures.”
“Well, that may be all right for you, Aline, because you can tell magnificent stories yourself; but I cannot,10 and it only makes me feel creepy and the rain annoys me because I cannot go out. I wish that we had adventures ourselves, but of course nothing exciting ever happens to us.”
“They probably would not really be nice if they did happen. These things are better to read about than to experience.”
“I don’t know,” said Audry; “anyway, the only exciting thing that ever happened to me was when you came to stay here. I really was excited when mother told me that a distant cousin of my own age was coming from Scotland to live with us; and I made all sorts of pictures of you in my mind. I thought that you would have a freckled face and be very big and strong and fond of climbing trees and jumping and good shouting noisy games and that kind of thing.”
“You must be very disappointed then.”
“No, not exactly; I never thought that you would be so pretty:—was your mother pretty, Aline?”
“I do not remember my mother,” and a momentary cloud seemed to pass over the child’s beautiful face, “but her portrait that Master Lindsay painted is very beautiful, and father always said that it did not do her justice. It is very young, not much older than I am; she was still very young when she died.”
“How old was she?”
“I do not know exactly,” Aline answered, moving over to the window-seat and sitting down by Audry, “but I remember there was once some talk about it. Her name was Margaret and she was named after her grandmother or her great grandmother, who was lady in waiting to Queen Margaret, and who not only had the11 same name as the Queen but was born on the same day and married on the same day.”
“What Queen Margaret,” asked Audry, “and how has it anything to do with your mother?”
“Well, that is just what I forget,” said Aline with a smile like April sunshine;—“I used to think it was your queen, Margaret of Anjou, who married Henry IV; but she seems to be rather far back, so I have thought it might be Margaret Tudor, who married our James IV.
“I expected their age would settle it,” she continued, stretching out her arms and putting her hands on Audry’s knees. “I looked it up; but they were almost the same, your queen was fourteen years and one month when she married and ours was thirteen years and nine months. But I know that mother was exactly six months older to a day when she married, and I know that she died before the year was out.”
“Then she was not nearly sixteen anyway,” said Audry; “how sad to die before one was sixteen!”
“Yes, Audry, it is terrible, but there is worse than that,—think of poor Lady Jane Grey who was barely sixteen when she and her husband were executed. Father used to tell me that I was something like the Lady Jane.”
“Had he seen her?”
“No, I do not think so; he was in France with our Queen Mary at the time of the Lady Jane’s death and your Queen Mary’s accession: for a short time he was a captain in the Scots Guard in France.”
“Were you with him and have you seen the Queen? She is about your age, is she not?”
“No, I have not seen her, but she is a little older than I12 am. She is fourteen and is extraordinarily beautiful. They say her wedding to the Dauphin is to take place very soon. If father had been alive I might have seen it.”
“Was your father good looking?” asked Audry.
“Yes, he was said to be the handsomest man in the Lothians.”
“That explains it, then,” she went on, looking somewhat enviously at her companion; “but I wish you cared more for games and horses and running and a good romp and were not so fond of old books. Fancy a girl of your age being able to read the Latin as well as a priest. Father says that you know far more Latin than he does and that you can even read the Greek.”
“But I can run,” Aline objected, “and I can swim, too.”
“Yes, you can run, though you do not look like it, you wee slender thing, but you do not love it as I do;” and Audry stood up to display her sturdy little form. “Now if we were to wrestle,” she said, “where would you be?”
Aline only laughed and said: “Well, there is one good thing in reading books, it gives one something to do in wet weather. Let us go down to the library and see if I cannot find something nice to read to you.”
“Come along, then, and read to me from that funny old book by Master Malory, with the pictures.”
“You mean the ‘Morte d’Arthur,’ I suppose, with the stories of King Arthur and the Round Table. That certainly is exciting and I am so fond of it. I often wish that there were knights going about now to fight for us in tourney and to rescue us from tyrants. It would be nice to have anybody care for one so much.”
13
“You silly little one, they would not trouble their heads about you, you are only twelve years old.”
“Perhaps not,” answered Aline with a half sigh, as she thought of her present condition.
“I do not believe there is anybody in the world that cares for me,” she said to herself, “except perhaps Audry, and I have only known her such a little time that she cannot care much. I don’t suppose there are many little girls who can be as lonely as I am. I have not even an aunt or uncle. Yes, I do want some one to love me, it is all so very hard; I wish I had a sister or a brother.”
In a way, doubtless, Audry’s mother did not mean to be altogether cruel; but she had no love for her small visitor and thought that it was unnecessary for Master Mowbray to bring her to Holwick Hall. So she always found plenty of heavy work for the child to do and often made excuses when Audry had some dainty or extra pleasure as to why Aline should not have her share. Aline thought of her father, Captain Angus Gillespie of Logan, and remembered his infinite care for her when she had been the apple of his eye. It had been a sad little life;—first she had been motherless from infancy and then had followed the long financial difficulties that she did not understand; but one thing after another had gone; and just before her father died they had had to leave Logan Tower and go and live in Edinburgh; and the little estate was sold.
Audry in her rough, kindly way, flung her arms round the slim form and kissed her. “Do not think melancholy things; come along to the library and see what we can find.” So they left the solar and went down14 through the hall and out into the upper court. They raced across the court, because of the rain, and up the little flight of nine steps, three at a time, till they were on the narrow terrace that ran along the front of the library.
Aline reached the door first, and, as she swung back the heavy oak with its finely carved panels, exclaimed: “There, I told you I could run.”
They shut the door and walked down the broad central space. The library had been built in the fifteenth century by Master James Mowbray, Audry’s great-great-grandfather, and was supposed to be the finest in the North of England. It was divided on each side into little alcoves, each lit by its own window and most of the books were chained to their places, being attached to a long rod that ran along the top of each shelf. At the end of each alcove was a lock with beautifully wrought iron tracery work that held the rod so that it could not be pulled out. The library was very dusty and was practically never used, as the present lord of Holwick was not a scholar; so for the last four years since he had succeeded to the estate it had been neglected and Aline was almost the only person who ever entered it.
The children walked down the room admiring the delicate iron work of the locks, for which Aline had a great fancy and she had paused at one, which was her particular favourite, and was fingering every part of it affectionately, when she noticed that a small sculptured figure was loose and could be made to slide upwards. This excited her curiosity and she pushed it to and fro to see if it was for any special purpose, till suddenly she discovered that, when the figure was pushed as high15 as it would go, the whole lock could be pulled forward like a little door on a hinge, revealing a small cavity behind. Both children started and peered eagerly into the space disclosed, where they found a very thin little leather book which was dropping to pieces with old age. They took it out and examined it and found that the cover had separated so as to lay open what had been a secret pocket in the cover, which contained a piece of stout parchment the same size as the pages of the book.
The book was written in black letter and was in Latin. “Now you see the use of knowing Latin,” said Aline triumphantly, with a twinkle in her dark blue eyes.
“That depends whether it is interesting,” Audry replied.
“It seems to be an account of the building of Holwick Hall; but what is the use of this curious piece of parchment with all these holes cut in it?”
“Perhaps you can find out if you read the book,” suggested Audry. “It certainly must be of some importance or they would not have taken all that trouble to hide the book and also the parchment in the book. Let us sit down and see what you can make of it.”
So they sat down and Aline was soon deeply interested in the account of the building, how the great dining hall was erected first, then the buttery, pantry and kitchen and afterwards the beautiful solar. Audry found her interest flag; although, when it came to the building of her room and the cost of the different items, she brightened up. “Still,” she said, “I do not see why all this should be kept so secret; any one might know all that we have read.”
There was one thing that seemed to promise interest,16 but apparently it led to nothing. At the beginning of the book was a dedication which could be translated thus: “To my heirs trusting that this may serve them as it has served me.” But in what way it was to serve them did not appear, and the evening was closing in and it was getting dark, but the children were as far as ever from discovering the meaning of the phrase or of the parchment with the holes.
“Let us take it to our room,” Aline said at last; “it is not chained like the others. We can hide it in the armoire and read with the little lamp when the others have gone to sleep and no one is likely to come in.”
So they put the piece of parchment to mark the place, ran to their room and hid the book and went to join the rest of the family.
It was nearly time for rere-supper and Master Richard Mowbray had just come in. He was dripping wet and the water ran down in long streams across the floor. “Gramercy,” he exclaimed, “it is not a fit day for a dog let alone a horse or a man. Come and pull off my boots, wench,” he went on, catching sight of Aline.
3 A meal taken about 8 o’clock.
He sat down and Aline with her little white hands manfully struggled with the great boots. “You are not much good at it,” he said roughly, when at last she succeeded in tugging off the first one. “Ah, well, never mind,” he added, when he saw her wince at his words, and stooped and kissed her and called to one of the men to come and take off the other boot. “You cannot always live on a silk cushion, lassie,” he went on, not unkindly, “you must work like the rest of us.”
17
“It is a strange thing where that man can have got,” he continued; “in all this rain it is impossible that he can have gone far.”
“Let us hope he is drowned,” Mistress Mowbray remarked; “that would save us further trouble, but it is a pity that a man meant for the fire should finish in the water.”
“Some of the folk going to Middleton say that they saw a stranger early this morning, playing with a child, but he turned off toward the hills,” one of the serving men observed.
“That’s he, but it’s hard enough to find a man in a bog-hole, particularly on a day like this, yet Silas Morgan and William Nettleship have both taken over a score of men and there must easily be two score of others on the hills; you would think that they would find him. He cannot know the hills as we do,” said Master Mowbray.
There was silence for a time and then he spoke again,—“Of course those people might be mistaken; but he could not get over Middleton Bridge after the watch was set, and I do not see how any one could get over the river to-day, it is simply a boiling torrent. Well, they are on the look out on the Appleby side and he must come down somewhere.”
“What is he wanted for?” Audry ventured to ask.
“Wanted for?” almost shrieked Mistress Mowbray, “a heretic blaspheming Mother Church, whom the good priest said was a servant of the devil.”
“But what is a heretic and how does he blaspheme Mother Church?” Audry persisted.
“I do not know and I do not want to know,” said Mistress Mowbray.
18
“Then if you do not know, how can you tell that it is wrong? You must know what he says, Mother, before you can judge him.”
“I was brought up a good daughter of the church, and I know when I am right, and look here, you young hussie, what do you mean by talking to your mother like that? It’s that good for nothing baggage, that your father has brought from Scotland, that has been putting these notions into your head, with her book learning and nonsense. I assure you that I won’t have any more of it, you little skelpie, you are not too old for a good beating yet, and I tell you what;—I will not have the two of you wasting your time in that library, I shall lock it up, and you are not to go in there without permission, and that will not be yet awhile, I can promise you.”
4 A girl young enough to be whipped (skelped).
After this outburst the meal was eaten in silence and every one felt very uncomfortable.
When supper was over the sky seemed to show signs of breaking and Master Mowbray ventured to express a hope that the next day would be fine, and that they would be able to find the heretic on the hills. “That man has done more mischief than any of the others,” he muttered; but when pressed to explain himself he changed the subject and said he must go and see if the water had done any damage in the lower court.
The children were not sorry to retire to their room when bedtime came. They had undressed and Audry was helping Aline to brush her great masses of long hair. What a picture she looked in her little white night-robe, with her large mysterious dark blue eyes that no one ever saw without being stirred, and her wonderful19 charm of figure! Her colouring was as remarkable as her form. The hair was of a deep dark red, somewhat of the colour beloved by Titian, but with more gloss and glow although a little lower in tone; that colour which one meets perhaps once in a lifetime, a full rich undoubted red, but without a suspicion of the garishness and harshness that belongs to most red hair. The eyes were of the dark ultramarine blue only found among the Keltic peoples and even then but rarely, like the darkest blue of the Mediterranean Sea, when the sapphire hue is touched with a hint of purple.
“What is a heretic?” Audry asked; “I am sure you know.”
“I do not know that I do, but I remember father saying something to me about it before he died. He said that they were people who were not satisfied with the way that things were going in the church and that in particular they denied that it was only through the priests of the church that God spoke to his people. They say that the priests are no better than any one else and indeed are sometimes even worse.”
“I do not know that they claim to be better than other people,” objected Audry.
“Well, dear, I am not defending the heretics. I only say what they think. They do feel, however, that if the priests really were the special channels of God that that fact itself would make them better. So, many of them say that God can and does speak directly to all of us himself, and they all think that it is in the Bible that we can best learn what he desires, and that the Bible should therefore be translated into the language of the people.
“‘This has been the cause of great troubles in the20 world for these many years,’ father said, ‘but, little maid, do not trouble your head about it now; when you are older we can talk about it.’”
“Are the heretics such very wicked people then, do you think, Aline?”
Aline put her little white hand to her chin and looked down. “I do not know what to think about it,” she said. “I suppose that they are, but they do not seem to be treated fairly.”
“I hate unfairness,” said Audry in her impulsive way.
“I do not see why they should not be allowed to speak for themselves, and I do not see how people can condemn them when they do not know what their reasons are for thinking what they do. Of course I am very young and do not know anything about it; but it sounds as though the priests were afraid that the truth can not take care of itself; but surely it cannot be the truth if it is afraid to hear the other side. I remember a motto on the chimney piece at home,—‘Magna veritas est et prevalebit,’ and it seems to me that it must be so. I wish that father were alive to talk to me. He was so clever and he understood things.”
“But you have not said what your motto means,” Audry interposed.
Aline laughed through the tears that were beginning to gather,—“Oh, that means, The truth is great and will prevail. If it is the truth it must win; and it can do it no harm to have objections raised against it, as it will only make their error more clear.”
“What about the book, Aline?” said Audry, changing the subject; “no one is likely to come up here now, they never do; so I think we could have another look at it.”
21
Aline picked up the book and opened it; she paused for a moment and then gave a little cry,—“I have found out what the parchment is for; come and look here.”
Audry came and looked. “I do not see anything,” she said.
“Look at the parchment; do you not see one or two letters showing through nearly all the little holes?”
“Yes.”
“What are they?”
“b. u. t. o. n. e. m. u. s. t. s. e. e. t. h. a. t. a. l. i. g. h. t. i. s. n. e. v. e. r. c. a. r. r. i. e. d. i. n. f. r. o. n. t. o. f. t. h. e. s. l. i. t. s. i. n. t. h. e.,” read Audry, a letter at a time.
“And what does that spell?” said Aline.
“Oh, I see,— It spells, ‘but one must see that a light is never carried in front of the slits in the.’ How clever of you to find it out!”
“Well, it was more or less accident; the parchment is exactly the size of the paper and as I shut the book I naturally made it all even. So, when I opened it in this room, it was lying even on the page and I could not help seeing the letters and what they spelt.”
“I should never have noticed it, Aline; why I did not even notice at once that the letters spelt anything after you had shown me.”
“Let us go back to the beginning and then,” said Aline, “we shall discover what it is all about.”
So she turned to the beginning of the book and placed the parchment over the page and found that it began like this;—“Having regard to the changes and misfortunes of this life and the dangers that we may incur, I have provided for myself and my heirs a place of refuge and a way of escape in the evil day. This book containeth22 a full account of the building of Holwick Hall; so that it will be easily possible to follow that which I now set down. Below the Library on the west side of the house just above the level of the moat, there is a secret chamber, which communicateth with a passage below the moat that hath an exit in the roof of the small cave in the gully that lieth some two hundred paces westward of the Hall of Holwick. The way of entrance thereto is threefold. There is an entrance from the library itself. There is also an entrance from the small Chamber that occupieth the southwest corner of the building on the topmost floor.”
“Why, that is our bedroom, the room that we are in now!” Audry exclaimed. “Do let us try and find it.”
“Wait a moment; the book will probably tell us all about it,” and Aline resumed her reading.
“‘There is a third method of approach from the store-chamber or closet on the ground floor in the southeast corner of the lower quadrangle.’”
“That is the treasury, where the silver and the other plate is kept,” said Audry; “go on.”
“‘In the corner of the library that goeth round behind the newel stair there is a great oaken coffer that is fastened to the floor, in the which are the charters and the license to crenellate and sundry other parchments.’”
5 To make battlements or crenellations. A house could not be fortified without a royal license.
“Oh, I have often wondered what was in that kist,” said Audry; “how really exciting things have become at last, but I want to find out the way to get down from our room; do go on.”
23
THE OLD SWORD-KIST.
“You must not keep interrupting then,” said Aline and continued her reading. “‘Now the bottom of this kist can be lifted for half its breadth, if the nail head with the largest rosette below the central hinge be drawn forth. After so doing, the outer edge of the plank next the wall in the bottom of the chest can be pushed down slightly, which will cause the inner edge to rise a little. This can then be taken by the hand and lifted. In exactly the same manner the plank of the floor immediately underneath can be raised.’
“I hope you understand it all,” Aline remarked.
“I am not quite sure that I do,” said Audry. “Yes, I think it is quite clear; it’s very like the way the lid works on the old sword-kist.”
“But we cannot get into the library and, even if we could,” said Audry, “the kist might be locked.”
24
“Never mind that now; I expect that our room will come next,” said Aline. “Yes, listen to this:—‘In the topmost chamber a different device is adopted for greater safety by means of variety. If the ambry nigh unto the door be opened it will be found that the shelf will pull forward an inch and a finger can be inserted behind it on the left hand side, and a small lever can be pushed backward. This enables the third plank near the newel-stair wall to be lifted by pressing down the western end thereof, and a bolt may be found which, being withdrawn, one of the panels will fall somewhat and may be pushed right down by the hand. The newel-stair, though it appeareth not, is double and one may creep down thereby to the chamber itself.’”
6 A small cupboard made in the thickness of the wall.
7 A newel staircase is a spiral staircase circling round the newel, i.e., the centre shaft or post.
The fact was,—that what appeared to be simply the under side of the steps, to any one going up the staircase, was really a second staircase, leaving a space of nearly three feet between the two.
The children did not read further at that time, as they were eager at once to see if they could put their discovery to the test.
Aline put down the book and went to the ambry and opened the door. The single shelf came forward without difficulty. “Have you found anything?” Audry asked eagerly.
“Yes,” she replied, “but I cannot move it; it is too stiff.”
“Let me have a try,” and Audry stepped forward and put her fingers into the space. “My hands are25 stronger than yours,” she said. “Ah, that is it!” she exclaimed, as she felt the lever move to one side, and by working it backwards and forwards she soon made it quite loose.
The Moving Plank and the Way to the Secret Room.
Aline meanwhile had already put her little foot on the third board, at the end just against the wall, and felt it yield. The other end was now sufficiently raised to allow of the fingers being passed underneath. She lifted it up and found that it was simply attached to a bar about six inches from the wall-end. They both peeped into the opening disclosed and felt round it. Aline was the first to find the bolt and pulled it forward. But alas no panel moved. Audry looked ready to weep, but Aline exclaimed, “Oh, it must be all right as we have got so far; let us feel the panels and try and force them down. This is the one above the bolt,” and she put her fingers on it to try and make it slide down. She had no sooner spoken than the panel moved an inch and, slipping her hand inside, she pressed it down to the bottom. The panel tended to rise again when she let go,26 as the bottom rested on the arm of a weighted lever. It looked very gloomy inside but the children were determined to go on. They then found that there was just comfortable room for them to go backwards down the stairs and that there would have been room even for a big man to manage it without much difficulty. There were many cobwebs and once or twice their light threatened to go out; but at last they reached the bottom, crawling on hands and knees the whole way. There they found a long narrow passage, in the thickness of the wall, of immense length. They went along this for a great distance and then began to get frightened.
“Where ever can we have got to?” Audry said at length.
“It is quite clear that we are wrong,” said Aline, “as the library, we know, is just at the bottom of the newel-stair and the book said that the secret room was just underneath the library. We must go back.”
“What if we go wrong again and lose our way altogether, Aline, and never get out of this horrible place?”
It was a terrible thought; and the damp smell and forbidding looking narrow stone passage had a strange effect on the children’s nerves. Then another thought occurred to Aline that made them still more nervous. There were occasional slits along the wall for ventilation and she remembered the words that she had read by chance when she first discovered the use of the parchment. Supposing that their light should be seen; what would happen to them then? and yet they dare not put it out and be left in the dark.
“I wish that we had never come,” said Audry as they hurried along the difficult passage. They reached the27 bottom of the stair and felt a little reassured. They then saw that the passage turned sharply back on itself and led in a step or two to a door. It was of very stout oak and plated with iron. They opened it and found that it had eight great iron bolts that could be shut on that side. Within was a second door equally strong and, on opening that, they found themselves in the secret room itself. It was a long apartment only about eight feet high, and was panelled throughout with oak. There was a large and beautiful stone fireplace, above which was the inscription,—“Let there be no fire herein save that the fires above be lit.”
“That must be in case the smoke should show,” said Aline; “how careful they have been with every little thing!”
The room was thick with dust and obviously had not been entered for many many years. Even if the present occupants of Holwick knew of the secret room at all, which probably they did not, it was clear that they never made any use of their knowledge. There was a magnificent old oak bed in one corner but some of the bedding was moth-eaten and destroyed. There were also many little conveniences in the room, amongst other things a small book-case containing several books. On the whole it was a distinctly pleasant apartment despite the absence of any visible windows. There were even one or two pictures on the walls. In one corner on the outer wall was a door, which the children opened, and which clearly led to the underground passage below the moat; but they decided not to examine any more that night. So they made their way up the stairs again back to their room.
28
They were almost too excited to sleep and Aline, as her custom was, when she lay awake, amused herself by building castles in the air. Sometimes she would imagine herself as a great lady, sought after by all the noble knights of the land, but holding herself aloof with reserved dignity until one, by some deed of unusual distinction, should win her favour. As a rule, however, this seemed rather a dull part to play, though there was something naturally queenly in her nature, and she would therefore prefer something more active. She would take the old Scots romance of Burd Helen, or Burd Aline, as her own inspiration, and follow her knight in the disguise of a page over mountain and torrent and through every hardship. This better suited the romantic self-sacrifice of her usual moods and, by its imaginary deeds of heroism, ministered just as much to her sense of exaltation. To-night had opened vistas of new suggestion; and she pictured her knight and herself fleeing before a host of enemies and miraculously disappearing at the critical moment into the secret room. But at last she fell into a sound slumber and did not wake till it was nearly time for the morning meal.
ALINE certainly did not belong to any ordinary type and she would have puzzled the psychologist to classify. She was so many sided as to be in a class by herself. She had plenty of common sense and intelligence for her years and an outlook essentially fair minded and just. But she also had a quiet hauteur, curiously coupled with humility, and at the same time a winning manner that was irresistible; so that the strange thing was that she had only to ask and most people voluntarily submitted to her desires. This unusual power might have been very dangerous to her character and spoiled her, had it not been that what she wanted was almost always just and reasonable and moreover she never used her power for her own benefit. Further, her humble estimate of her own capacity for judgment caused her but rarely to exercise the power at all. In practice it was almost confined to those cases where a sweet minded child’s natural instinct for fair play sees further than the sophistries of the adult.
She was practically unaware of this power, which was destined to bring her into conflict with Eleanor Mowbray; nor did she take the least delight, as she might easily have done, in exercising power for power’s sake.
30
Eleanor Mowbray, on the other hand, like so many women, loved power. Masculine force has so largely monopolised the more obvious manifestations of power that it might be said to be almost a feminine instinct to snatch at all opportunities that offer themselves.
Be that as it may, Mistress Mowbray loved to use power for the sake of using it; she loved to make her household realise that she was mistress. She did not exactly mean to be unkind, but they were servants and they must feel that they were servants. Her attitude to them was that of the servant who has risen or the one so commonly exhibited toward servants by small girls, that puzzles and disgusts their small brothers.
She would address them contemptuously, or would impatiently lose her self-control and shout at them. She lacked consideration and would call them from their main duties to perform petty services, which she could perfectly well have done for herself. This was irritating to the servants and there was always a good deal of friction. The servants tended to lose their loyalty and, when once the bond of common interest was broken, what did it matter to Martha, the laundry-maid, that she one day scorched and destroyed the most cherished and valuable piece of lace that Mistress Mowbray possessed; or of what concern was it to Edward, the seneschal, that in cleaning the plate, he broke the lid off her pouncet box and not only did not trouble to tell her, but when charged with it, coolly remarked, after the manner of his kind,—“Oh, it came to pieces in my hands!”
On one occasion, before the discovery of the secret room, when Edward was away, Thomas, a sly unprincipled31 man, whose duties were with the horses, had taken his place for the day. The four silver goblets, which he had placed on the table, were all of them tarnished; and after the meal was over, Mistress Mowbray said to him sharply,—“Thomas, what do you mean by putting dirty goblets on the high table?”
8 The table on the raised dais at which the family sat. The retainers sat at the two lower tables. See plan.
“I am sure I did my best, Mistress,” said Thomas; “I spent a great amount of pains in laying the table, but we all of us make mistakes sometimes.”
“Then go and clean them at once, you scullion, and bring them back to me to look at directly you have finished.”
“Please, Mistress, that is not my work,” replied Thomas, “and I have a great deal to do in the stables this afternoon.” As a matter of fact he had finished his work in the stables and was planning for an easy time.
“Do you dare to talk to me?” she said, her voice rising. “You are here to do as you are told; go and clean them at once, or it will be the worse for you.” She knew that this time the man was within his rights; but she was not going to be dictated to by a servant.
Thomas sulkily departed. When he reached the buttery he remembered that he had noticed Edward cleaning some of the goblets the day before. He soon found them, and then drew himself a measure of ale and sat down with a chuckle to enjoy himself over the liquor, while allowing for the time that would have been needed to clean the silver.
Meanwhile Mistress Mowbray began impatiently to32 walk up and down the hall. The children were generally allowed to go out after dinner and amuse themselves, but it was a wet day and Aline was looking disconsolately out of the window wondering whether she should go into the library or what she should do, when the angry dame thought that the child offered an object for the further exercise of her power. “Why are you idling there?” she said. “They are all short-handed to-day, go you and scour out the sink and then take out the pig-bucket and be quick about it.”
Aline gave a little gasp of surprise, but ran off at once. The buttery door was open and she saw Thomas drinking and offering a tankard to one of the other servants, and she heard him laugh loudly as he pointed to a row of goblets, four of them clean and the rest of them dirty, while he said,—“Edward cleaned those, and I am waiting here as long as it would take to clean them.” He caught sight of her and scowled, but she passed on.
Aline had soon finished the sink and ran quickly with the pig-bucket, after which she returned to the dining hall to tell Mistress Mowbray she had finished. Thomas had just come in, so she stood and waited.
He held up the four goblets on a tray for Mistress Mowbray to inspect.
“Yes, those are better, Thomas,” she said frigidly. Thomas could not conceal a faint smile and the lady became suspicious. “By the way, Thomas, there are a dozen of these goblets, bring me the others.”
“Yes, Mistress,” said Thomas, triumphantly, “but they were all dirty and I have just cleaned these.”
Mistress Mowbray saw that she could not catch him33 that way, but felt that the man was somehow getting the better of her, so she merely replied calmly,—“Then you can clean the whole set, Thomas, and bring me the dozen to look at.”
Aline nearly burst into a laugh, but put her hand to her mouth and smothered it without Mistress Mowbray seeing; but Thomas saw and as he departed, crest-fallen, he vowed vengeance in his heart.
“Have you done what I told you, child?” Mistress Mowbray said, turning to Aline. “Marry, but I trust you have done it well. It is too wet for you to go out; you can start carding a bag of wool that I will give you. That will keep you busy.”
Aline sighed, as she had hoped to get into the library and she wondered what Audry was doing, who had been shrewd enough to get away, but she said nothing and turned to her task.
At first Eleanor Mowbray’s treatment of Aline was merely the joy of ordering some one about, of compelling some one to do things whether they liked to or not, just because they were not in a position of power to say no; but what gave her a secret additional joy was that Aline was a lady and she herself was not. True, Aline’s father was only one of the lesser Lairds, but he was a gentleman of coat armour, whereas Eleanor Mowbray was merely the beautiful daughter of the wealthy vintner of York. It caused Eleanor Mowbray great satisfaction to have the power to compel a gentleman’s daughter to serve her in what her plebeian mind34 considered degrading occupations. It was for this reason therefore that Aline was set to scour sinks, scrub floors and empty slops, with no deliberate attempt to be unkind, but simply to feed the love of power.
9 A gentleman is a man who has the right conferred by a royal grant to his ancestors or himself of bearing a coat of arms. It is not as high a rank as esquire with which it is often confused.
As a matter of fact, so long as the tasks remained within her physical strength, Aline was too much of a lady to mind and, if need had been, would have cleaned out a stable, a pigsty or a sewer itself, with grace and dignity and even have lent distinction to such occupations.
But these very qualities led to further antagonism on Eleanor Mowbray’s part. They were part of that power of the true lady that in Aline was developed to an almost superhuman faculty and which went entirely beyond any power of which Mistress Mowbray even dreamed and yet without the child making any effort to get it. Aline herself indeed was unconscious of her strength as anything exceptional. She had been brought up by her father, practically alone and had not as yet come to realise how different she was from other children.
It was the morning after the discovery of the secret room that Mistress Mowbray had the first indication that Aline had a power that might rival her own. It was a small incident, but it sank deeply and Eleanor Mowbray did not forget it.
She was expecting a number of guests to dinner and it looked as though nothing would be ready in time. She rushed to and fro from the hall to the kitchen upbraiding the servants and talking in a loud and domineering tone. But the servants, who were working as hard as the average of their class, became sullen and35 went about their labours with less rather than more effort.
Eleanor Mowbray was furious and finding Aline still at her spinning wheel, where she herself had put her, “’Sdeath child,” she exclaimed, “this is no time for spinning, what possesses you? I cannot get those varlets to work, everything is in confusion,—knaves!—hussies!—go you to the kitchen and lend a hand and that right speedily.”
Aline felt sorry for her hostess, who certainly was like enough to have her entertainment spoilt. She had already noticed that the servants in the hall were very half-hearted, so she said, “I will do what I can, Mistress Mowbray, perhaps I might help to get them to work.”
“You, indeed,” said the irate lady, “ridiculous child!—but go along and assist to carry the dishes.”
Aline rose and passed into the screens and down the central passage to the kitchen. The place was filled with loud grumbling, almost to the verge of mutiny.
As the queenly little figure stood in the doorway, the servants nudged each other and the voices straightway subsided.
“Hush, she will be telling tales,” said one of the maids quietly.
“Nonsense,” said Elspeth, Audry’s old nurse, who was assisting, “surely you know the child better than that.”
For a moment or two Aline did not speak and a strange feeling of shame seemed to pervade the place.
“Elspeth,” said Aline, while the flicker of a smile betrayed her, “if you run about so, you’ll wear out your36 shoon; you should sit on the table and swing your feet like Joseph there.”
“Now, hinnie, why for are you making fun of an old body?”
“I would not make fun of you for anything,” said Aline; “but look at his shoon; are they not fine,—and his beautiful lily-white hands?”
“Look as if you never did a day’s work, Joe,” said Silas, the reeve.
“Oh, no, he works with his brain, he’s thinking,” said Aline, putting her hand to her brow with mock gravity. “He’s reckoning up his fortune. How much is it, Joseph?”
“Methinks his fortune will all be reckonings,” said Silas, “for he’ll never get any other kind.”
“Well, we’ll change the subject; there’s going to be a funeral here to-night,” Aline observed.
“No, really?” exclaimed half a dozen voices.
“Yes, it’s a terrible story and it really ought not to be known; but you’ll keep it secret I know,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper.
As they crowded round her she went on in mysterious tones, “You know John Darley and Philip Emberlin.”
“Yes,” said Joe, rousing himself to take in the situation, “they are coming here to-night.”
“They’ve a long way to come and they are not strong,” said Aline, “and they will arrive hungry and just have to be buried, because there was nothing to eat. Yes, it’s a sad story; I’m not surprised to see the tears in your eyes, Joseph, and, in fact, in a manner of speaking you might say that you will have killed them, you and your accomplices,” she added, looking round.
37
A good tempered laugh greeted this last sally.
“Marry, we have much to get through. How can I help? It would be a sorry thing that Holwick should be disgraced before its guests. Give me something to do.”
There was nothing in the words, but the tone was one of dignity combined with gentleness and sympathy.
The effect was peculiar;—no one felt reproved, but felt rather as though there was full sympathy with his own point of view; yet at the same time he was conscious that he would lose his own dignity if he became querulous and allowed the honour of the house to suffer.
Aline helped for a short time and then, leaving them for a moment all cheerful and joking but working with a will, she looked into the buttery, where she saw Thomas and Edward, the seneschal, a pompous but good hearted fellow, merely talking and doing nothing.
“You are not setting us a good example,” she said laughing; “everybody else is working so hard,” and then she added in a tone that combined something of jest, something of command and something of a coaxing quality, “do try to keep things going; Master Richard would be much put about if he failed in his hospitality.”
This time there was undoubtedly a very gentle sting in the tone that pricked Edward’s vanity; yet his own conscience smote him, so that he bore no ill will.
He said nothing, however, but Thomas remarked;—“Yes, Mistress Aline, the sin of idleness is apt to get hold of us, we must to our work as you say.”
Aline raised her eyebrows slightly, the ill-bred vulgarity of the remark was too much for her sensitive nature. Thomas was marked by that lack of refinement38 that cheapens all that is noble and good by ostentatious piety and sentimentality.
Aline gave a little shiver and passed on to do the same with the others. She also took her full share in the work, so that in fifteen minutes everything was moving smoothly. It was done entirely out of kindness, but Eleanor Mowbray felt that it was a triumph at her expense and although Aline had helped her out of a difficulty, she only bore a grudge against her.
Thomas also was nettled. Aline had got the better of him; he suspected her, too, of seeing through his hypocrisy; which, as a matter of fact, she had only partially done, as she was so completely disgusted at his vulgarity that she did not look further.
It was not till the afternoon that the children had any opportunity to pursue their own devices and they decided, as the day was fine and the storm had cleared away, that they would go down to the river near-by and see the waterfall before the water had had time greatly to abate.
They did not go straight across the moor, but went by way of the small hamlet of Holwick. Everything looked bright and green after the rain, varied by the grey stone walls, that ran across the country, separating the little holdings. The distance was brilliantly blue and the wide spaciousness that characterises the great rolling moorland scenery was enhanced by the beauty of the day.
The children turned into the second cottage which was even humbler than its neighbours. It was a long, low, thatched building, roughly built of stone with clay instead of mortar. Within, a portion was divided off39 at one end by a wooden partition. There was no window save one small opening under the low eaves which was less than six feet from the ground. It was about eight inches square and filled with a piece of oiled canvas on a rudely made movable frame instead of glass. In warm weather it often stood open.
The children stumbled as they entered the dark room and crossed the uneven floor of stamped earth. There was no movable furniture save one or two wooden kists or chests, a dilapidated spinning wheel and a couple of small stools. In the very middle of the floor was a fire of peats on a flat slab of stone in the ground and a simple hole in the roof allowed the choking smoke to escape after it had wandered round the whole building.
An old man, bent double with rheumatism, hastened forward as the children came to the door and, holding out both his hands, shook Audry’s and Aline’s at the same time. “I am right glad to see you,” he said, “and may the Mother of God watch over you.”
He quickly brought two stools and, carefully dusting them first, bade his young visitors sit down by the fire.
“How is Joan to-day, Peter,” asked Aline, “she isn’t out again is she?”
“No, Mistress Aline, she has been worse the last few days and is in bed, but maybe the brighter weather will soon see her out and about.”
He hobbled over toward a corner of the cottage, where a box-bed stood out from the wall. It was closed in all around like a great cupboard, with sliding shutters in the front. These were drawn back, but the interior was concealed by a curtain. He drew aside this curtain and within lay a little girl about eleven years old40 with thin wasted cheeks and hollow sunken eyes. She stretched out her small hand as the two children approached and a smile lit up the white drawn face.
Aline stooped and kissed her. “Oh, Joan,” she said, “I wish you would get well, but it is always the same, no sooner are you up than you are back in bed again. I have been asking Master Mowbray about you and he has promised that the leech from Barnard Castle shall come and see you as soon as he can get word to him.”
“It is good of you to think and plan about me, Mistress Aline, and I believe I am not quite so badly to-day, but I wish that horrid old ‘Moll o’ the graves’ would not come in here and look at me. She does frighten me so. Mother was always so frightened of Moll.”
“She is a wretched old thing,” said Audry, “but do not let us think about her.”
“You mustn’t thank us, anybody would do the same,” said Aline; “you cannot think how sorry we are to see you like this, and you must just call me Aline the same as I call you Joan. See! Audry and I have brought you a few flowers and some little things from the Hall that old Elspeth has put up for us, and when the leech comes, he will soon make you well again.”
“I sometimes wonder whether I shall ever get well any more; each time I have to go back to bed I seem to be worse. All my folk are gone now and I am the only one left. The flowers are right bonnie though and the smell of them does me good,” she added, as she lifted the bunch of early carnations that the children had brought.
After she had spoken she let her hand fall and lay41 quite still gazing at the two as though even the few words had been too great an effort.
The bed looked very uncomfortable and Aline and Audry did their best to smooth it a little, after which Joan closed her eyes and seemed inclined to sleep.
“I wish we could get her up to the Hall,” said Aline in a whisper, “the smoke is so terrible and I never saw such a dreadful place as that bed.”
“Mother would never hear of it; so it’s no use your thinking of such a thing.”
They returned to the fire and sat down on the stools for a few moments before leaving.
“Ay, the child is about right,” said the old man, “her poor mother brought her here from Kirkoswald when her man died last November. Sarah Moulton was a sort of cousin of my wife who has been lying down in Middleton churchyard this many a long year. She lived in this very house as a girl and seemed to think she would be happier here than in Kirkoswald. Well, it was not the end of March before she had gone too and the lassie is all that is left.”
The children bade farewell and went out. As they passed the end of the house they saw the black figure of an old woman creeping round the back as though not wishing to be seen.
“Oh, there’s that horrible old woman! ‘Moll o’ the graves,’” said Audry; “let us run. I wonder what she has been doing listening round the house; I hate her. You know, Aline, they say she does all manner of dreadful things, that it was she who made all old Benjamin Darley’s sheep die. Some people say she eats children and if she cannot get hold of them alive she42 digs them up from their graves at night. I do not believe it, but come along.”
“No, I want to see what she is doing,” said Aline; “I am sure she is up to no good. I believe that she has been spying outside waiting for us to depart, so that she can go in.”
“But you cannot prevent her,” said Audry.
“We must prevent her,” said Aline; “she might frighten Joan to death.”
Aline was right and the old woman came round from the other end of the house and approached the cottage door. Aline at once advanced and stood between the old woman and the door, while Audry followed and took up her position beside Aline.
“What do you want, mother?” said Aline.
“What business is that of yours?” said the old dame savagely; “you clear away from that door or I will make it the worse for you.”
She raised her stick as she spoke and glared at the children. It was not her physical strength that frightened them, as they were two in number, although she was armed with a stick, but something gruesome and unearthly about her manner. Aline took a step forward so as half to shelter Audry, but her breath came quickly and she was filled with an unspeakable dread.
“You must not go in there,” said the child firmly; “there is a little girl within who is sick and she must not be disturbed.”
“I shall do as I please and go in if I please,” she muttered, advancing to the door and laying her hand on the latch.
Aline at once seized her by the shoulders, saying, “I43 may want your help, Audry,” and gently but firmly turned her round and guided her on to the road. Moll made no resistance, as she feared the publicity of the road and moreover the girls were both strong and well built, though of different types. Aline then stepped so as to face her, and keeping one hand on her shoulder, she said, as she looked her full in the eyes,—“go home, Moll, Joan is not well enough to see any one else to-day,—go home.”
The old woman’s eyes dropped; she was cowed; she felt herself in the presence of something she had never met before, as she caught the fire in those intense blue eyes. “I will never forgive you,” she snarled, but she skulked down the road like a beaten dog.
The children stood and watched her, feeling a little shaken after their unpleasant experience.
“What a good thing you were there,” said Audry. “I am sure she would have frightened Joan terribly.”
“Come, let us forget it,” and they raced down to the waterfall.
It was a magnificent sight, one great seething mass of foam, cream-white as it boiled over the cliff; while below, the dark brown peat-coloured water swirled, mysteriously swift and deep, and rainbows danced in the flying spray. They walked down the stream a little way watching the rushing flood, when Aline suddenly cried out, “Audry, what is that on the other side?”
Just under the rock, partly concealed by the over-hanging foliage, could be made out with some difficulty the form of a man. He was lying quite still and although they watched for a long time he never moved at all.
44
“I wonder if he is hiding,” said Audry.
“I am sure he is not,” said Aline. “It would be a very poor place to hide, particularly when there are so many better ones quite close by. He may be drowned.”
“Possibly, but I think he is too high out of the water.”
“Then perhaps he is only hurt; I wonder if there is anything that we could do.”
“We might go up to the Hall and get help,” Audry suggested.
“Yes,” said Aline, doubtfully, as the thought crossed her mind that he might be the poor stranger whom the country-side was hunting like a beast of prey and although she could not explain her feelings she felt too much pity to do anything that might help the hunters and therefore it would not be wise to go to the Hall. It was partly the natural gentleness of her nature and partly her instinctive abhorrence of the vindictive way in which Mistress Mowbray had spoken on the previous night.
Then a shudder passed through her as she looked at the foaming torrent. Any help that could be given must be through that. Aline was only a child; but until she came to Holwick Hall she had lived entirely with older people and realised as children rarely do the full horror of death. It was so easy to stay where she was, she was not even absolutely certain that the stranger was in any real danger. It was not her concern. But Aline from long association with her brave father had a measure of masculine physical courage that will even court danger and that overcame her natural girlish timidity, and along with that she had in unusual degree the true feminine courage that can suffer in silence45 looking for no approval, no victory and no reward, the stuff of which martyrs are made. “He is obviously unfortunate,” she said to herself,—“Oh, if I could only help him, what does it matter about me, and yet how beautiful the day is, the rainbows, the clear air, the flowers and dear Audry; must I risk them all?”
She was not sure, however, what line her cousin might take and therefore did not like to express her thoughts aloud. On the other hand she could do nothing without Audry, but she thought it best to keep her own counsel and do as much as she could before Audry could possibly hinder her. So she only said;—“But if we went for help to the Hall it might be too late before any one came, if he is injured and still alive.”
At this moment both of them distinctly saw the figure move, and Aline at once said, “Oh, we must help him at once. I am sure we should not be in time if we went up to the Hall. We might find no one who could come and there might be all manner of delays.”
“But whatever can you do, Aline, he is on the other side?”
“I shall try and swim across,” she said, after thinking a moment.
“What, in all this flood! That is impossible.”
“I think I could manage it, if I went a little lower down the river where the torrent is not quite so bad.”
“Aline, you will be killed; you must not think of it.”
But Aline had already started down the bank to the spot that she had in her mind. Audry ran after her, horror struck and yet unable to offer further opposition.
“Well,” she said, “you are always astonishing me,” as Aline was taking off her shoes; “you seem too timid46 and quiet, and here you are doing what a man would not attempt.”
“My father would have attempted it,” was all that Aline vouchsafed in reply.
She took off her surcoat, her coat-hardie and her hose, and then turned and kissed Audry. “There is no one to care but you,” she said, “if I never come back.”
For a few moments the little slim figure stood looking at the black whirling of the treacherous water, her dainty bare feet on the hard rocks. Her white camise lifted and fluttered over her limbs like the draperies of some Greek maiden, the sunlight flushing the delicate texture of her skin, while her beautiful hair flew behind her in the breeze. It was but a passing hesitation and then she plunged in and headed diagonally up the river. She struck out hard and found that she could make some progress from the shore although she was being swiftly carried down the stream. If only she could reach the other side before she was swept down to the rapids below, where she must inevitably be smashed to pieces on the rocks! It was a terrible struggle and Audry sat down on the bank and watched her, overcome by tears. “Oh, Aline, little Aline,” she cried, “why did I ever let you go?” At last she could bear to look no longer. Aline had drawn nearer and nearer to the rapids, and although she was now close to the further bank there seemed not the slightest hope of her getting through.
She held on bravely, straining herself to the utmost, but it was no use;—she was in the rapids when only a couple of yards from the shore. Almost at once she struck a great rock, but, as it seemed by a miracle,47 although much bruised, she was carried over the smooth water-worn surface and by a desperate movement that taxed her strength to the uttermost, was able to force herself across it and the small intervening space of broken water and scramble on to the shore.
When Audry at length looked up, Aline was standing wringing the water out of her dripping hair, shaken and bruised and cut in several places, but alive. She took off the garment she had on and wrung it out before putting it on again. She then paused for a moment not knowing what to do. Blood was flowing freely from a deep cut below the right knee and also from a wound on the back of her right shoulder. She hesitated to tear her things for fear of the wrath of Mistress Mowbray, but at the same time was frightened at the loss of blood. Finally she tore off some strips of linen and bandaged herself as well as she could manage and made her way to where the man was lying.
Ian Menstrie had had a hard struggle. He had been working as a carpenter in Paris and had fallen in with some of his exiled countrymen and become for a time a servant to John Knox. It was three weeks since he had left France with the important documents that he was bearing from Knox and others; and only his iron determination had carried him through. Time and again nothing but the utmost daring and resourcefulness had enabled him to slip through his enemies’ hands. He had actually been searched twice unsuccessfully before he was finally arrested as a heretic at York. After extreme suffering he had escaped again and the precious papers were still with him. He had reached Aske Hall in Yorkshire, some twenty miles or so, over48 the hills, from Holwick, the home of Elizabeth of Aske, mother of Margaret Bowes, whom Knox had married, a lady with whom the reformer regularly corresponded.
But almost at once he again had to give his pursuers the slip, and he made his way up Teesdale with the precious papers still on him.
Although they were hot on his trail he had managed to get through Middleton in the night unobserved and would probably have reached the hills and got away North, unseen; but he met a little four-year-old boy on the road, who had fallen and hurt himself and was sitting in the rain and crying bitterly. There was nothing serious about it, but the child had a large bruise on his forehead. Ian had hesitated a moment, looking apprehensively behind, but stopped and bathed the bruise at a beck close by, comforted the child and carried him to his home and set him down just outside the little garden.
The delay, however, had cost him dear; the day was now fully up and two or three people noticed the stranger as he left the road to try and make for the steepest ground where pursuit would be less easy. Shortly afterwards he had seen men in the distance, both on foot and on horseback, setting out on his track and, with infinite difficulty, availing himself of every hollow, at the risk of being seen at any moment he had made his way to the river. If only he could get across, he argued, he might consider himself tolerably safe. They would never suspect that he was on that side and it was in any case the best road to the North. He knew little of the country, of course, or that there was a better place to attempt the feat lower down the stream. He leaped49 in where he found himself and being a strong swimmer he made his way over but was sucked down by an eddy and dashed against the cliff on the opposite side, but on coming to the surface again he had just sufficient strength to get out of the water and crawl along the ledge of rock to where the overhanging leaves afforded at least a partial concealment. Indeed, the place was such an unlikely one that anybody actually searching for him would probably have overlooked it.
He had lain there for hours, the pain in his head being intense. One ankle was badly sprained and much swollen and he felt sure that he had broken his left collar bone. He had had nothing to eat for days and the dizziness and the pain together caused him repeatedly to fall into a fitful doze from which he would wake trembling, with his heart beating violently. It was after one of these dozes that he woke and, on opening his eyes, saw a little figure in white bending over him, whose large dark blue eyes, filled with pity, were looking into his face. Her long hair fell down so as to touch him and her beautiful arms rested on the rock on either side of his head. At first he thought it was a water-sprite with dripping locks, of which many tales were told by the country folk, and then he noticed the blood oozing from below the bandage on the little arm. “Who are you?” he asked at last, as his senses gradually returned.
“My name is Aline and I have come to help you,” she said.
“But, sweet child, how can you do that?”
As his brain became clearer he became more able to face the situation. Who could this exquisite fairy-like50 little damsel possibly be, and how could she ever have heard of him and why should any family that wished to help him do it by the hands of any one so young? Then she was wet and wounded, which made the case still more extraordinary. “Little one,” he went on, “why have you come; do you know who I am?”
“No,” she said, “but I saw you lying on the rock and so I came across to try and do something for you.”
“You do not mean to say that you swam that raging river?”
“It was the only way to reach you.”
“And you are really a little girl and not a water fay?” he asked half playfully and half wondering if there really could be such things, as so many people seriously believed. It was almost easier to believe in fairies than to believe that a little girl had actually swum that flood.
“Of course I am; you have hurt your head and are talking nonsense.”
It seemed hard to tell her who he was; this charming little maiden would then hate him like the rest. It was not that he thought that she could possibly be of serious assistance to him; but it was a vision of delight and there was a music in the sound of her voice that to the exile reminded him of his own country. Yet he felt it was his duty and indeed the child might be running great risks and get herself into dire trouble even by speaking to him, so intense was the hatred of the heretics.
“Child, you must not help me. I am a heretic.”
51
“I guessed that you were,” she said, and the large eyes were full of pity, “but somehow I feel that it is right to aid any one in distress.”
“When you are older, little one, you will think differently. It is only your sweet natural child-heart that instinctively sees the right without prejudice or sophistry.”
“I am afraid that I do not understand you; but we must not stop talking here, we must get you to a place of safety.”
“Will your people help me?” he said, as a possible explanation occurred to him. “Are they of the reformed faith?”
“Are they heretics? you mean; no, indeed.” There was just the suspicion of a touch of scorn in her voice; it was true that to her a heretic was a member of a despised class, but there was also a slight, commingling of bitterness that gave the ring to her words, and which he did not detect, when she thought of the unreasoning and uncharitable prejudice that Mistress Mowbray had shown the day before.
“But that does not mean that I would not help you,” she went on. “See this is what we must do. Somehow or other we must get back to the other side and first I ought to bandage your head. Have you hurt yourself anywhere else?” She looked him up and down as she spoke. “Oh, your ankle is all swollen and bleeding where you have torn your hose; we must try and do something for that.”
“That can wait for the present,” he said, glancing apprehensively at his shoes, which mercifully were still52 uninjured on his feet; “the worst thing is that I think that I have broken my collar bone. But before we do anything I must try and help you bandage your shoulder more satisfactorily for it is bleeding very badly. That will not be very easy,” he added, smiling, “as I have only one arm and you yourself cannot reach it.”
She let him try and between them they managed it somehow, and he wondered again as he tenderly manipulated the bandage, how such a little fragile thing could be undertaking such a strenuous task.
“I have not time to explain,” said Aline, “but there is a secret chamber in the Hall where you could be hidden, but we could not possibly get you there until it is dark. There is, however, a hollow tree on the other side where we sometimes play, in which you can sit with your feet outside and they can be covered up with grass and leaves. It is perhaps a little dangerous but I see no other way if your life is to be saved. Can you bend your arm at all?” she went on. “Has it any strength in it?”
“It is practically useless,” he replied.
“Well, somehow or other we have to swim back across that river; and it is lucky that it is enormously easier from this side. The rapids set towards this bank and on the other side there is a sort of backwater opposite to where the rapids begin on this. We can also with very little danger venture to start some twenty yards higher up than I did when I was coming.”
“But I do not think I could swim at all in that rush with only one arm, and in any case you will have to go round; you must not dream of attempting to swim that water again.”
53
With all her gentleness there was something very queenly about Aline. She lifted her head and said,—“We must both go and you must somehow hold on to me and there is no more to be said.”
He tried to dissuade her, but the little thing was adamant. He despised himself for allowing a child to help him at all, but was almost as under a spell. His will power under normal conditions was one of the most remarkable things about him; but the pain of fatigue and the long nervous strain had deprived him for the moment of his self-mastery. His head was full of strange noises and he seemed as though he were in a dream. At last he yielded, retaining just enough self-consciousness to determine that he would let himself go, and drown, if he were too great a drag on her. It was clear, as she said, that if she had already swum the other way, there was little real risk for her alone. Moreover the water was falling all the time and, even since she had come over, the stream was slightly less.
Before starting Aline looked round everywhere cautiously and then called to Audry, who was watching on the other side, to have a long branch ready to hold out to them. When Audry had obtained the branch they entered the water. Although the pain was almost intolerable he had decided to put his injured arm on her shoulder and it answered beyond their expectations. He was a very strong swimmer and all that it was necessary for Aline to do was to give the slight help necessary to counteract the one-sided tendency and to improve the balance of the forward part of the body, which otherwise would greatly have reduced the speed. So well did they manage it that they even got across with some54 ten yards to spare, being still further helped by Audry’s branch.
They clambered up the bank, a task not easy of accomplishment, and took Ian Menstrie at once to the tree which was close by. Aline put on her clothes, taking the remains of her linen shift for bandages. Luckily she had on several occasions in her father’s house helped to nurse the injured and knew how to bind the collar bone and make as good a piece of work of the ankle as the extemporised bandages would allow. Then bidding him good-bye the children hurried back to the Hall. Aline longed to take him food but decided that, sad as it was, it would be better to run no risks whatever. Moreover, she wanted to discover the passage under the moat and there was none too long before the evening meal.
AS they walked rapidly back, their tongues moved faster than their feet.
“Well, you’ve beaten Burd Aline,” said Audry, laughing; “you’ve rescued your knight before you even know his name. But I’m quite sure it’s all the wrong way round;—the knight should rescue his lady. Besides, what’s the good of a man in homespun; you need some grand person; you do not know how to do these things, my lady. I wonder who he is.”
“He’s Scots anyway; one can tell that from his accent.”
“I suppose you think a Scots peasant better than an English gentleman.”
“I will not be denying it,” laughed Aline.
“Oh! then yours shall be a peasant-knight, you always choose things different from other people. But I like his face, it looks strong.”
“Yes, but I am afraid he has had a terrible time,” said Aline; “how sad those deep-set eyes are; but they seem determined.”
“Don’t you like his mouth and chin? It’s a strong chin and I like those well-shaped sensitive lips.”
“Yes, but I think the eyes are more striking.”
“It’s no good, though, having a knight at all, certainly56 not a peasant-knight,” said Audry roguishly, “unless he has nice lips.”
Aline smiled. “You’re getting frivolous. Now be serious, we have a great deal to do.”
They reached the Hall, ran up to their bedroom and before they started on their further explorations Aline took out the book so as to be prepared for emergencies. She read on for some time and discovered several things, one was the way to open the trap door that led into the cave and especially the way that it could be made to open from the outside if the inner bolts were not fastened. Another important discovery was that the door of their room could be locked by an ingenious bolt in the secret stairway, that pushed back from the bolt-hole into the lock itself. This enabled any one to leave the room unlocked when away, so as to excite no suspicion. Yet on returning, after seeing that the room was empty, by peering through a small slit, one could, by locking the door, make sure that one would not be caught by any one entering the room at the same moment. The children again made their way down the stairs to the secret room where they paused a few moments to look at things for which there was not time on the previous occasion. There were several cupboards, one of which had stone shelves and was clearly intended for a larder. There was amongst other things a large iron chest, which did not seem to have any lock and which greatly excited their curiosity. In another chest they found several pistols and swords besides a few foils and some fencing masks. There were also some tools and some rope and a whole wardrobe of clothes of many kinds. Most of the things were very old but a certain57 number were comparatively recent. At the same time there was nothing to indicate that the room had been used for the last twenty years.
“Come, we must not stay looking at these things, however interesting,” said Aline; “we must be getting on. But I am glad there is a nice place to keep food; only we shall have a great difficulty in getting a supply.”
She opened a little door as she spoke and once more they found themselves in a narrow passage that led down a flight of steps. It turned abruptly to the right at the bottom of the steps and then went absolutely straight for what seemed to them an interminable length. It was only the thought of the wounded man that prevented them from turning back. There was a little drain at the bottom of the passage and the whole sloped slightly so that the water that percolated freely through the walls was carried off.
At last they reached the end, where the passage terminated in a short flight of stairs. At the bottom of the stairs was a basin hollowed in the rock and this was fed by a spring of delicious water. They went up these and found a curious door made of stone. It was fastened with huge wooden bolts, a precaution, as they afterwards guessed, against rust. They passed through and discovered that the other side of the door was quite irregular and rough and the chamber in which they found themselves, if chamber it could be called, was like a natural cave. In the middle of the rocky floor was a great stone. Even this looked natural although they found that, as the book had said, it was so cunningly shaped and balanced that it would swing into a vertical position without much effort and allow of a man58 dropping through on one side of it. But the clever part of it was,—that what looked like accidental breaks in the stone were so arranged that certain other blocks could be fitted into them and the surrounding rock so that it could not be moved. If then by any accident any one should make his way into the chamber he would only think that he had come into a natural cave. Audry let herself down through the hole and with the help of Aline dropped to the ground, and found herself in a small fissure or cave, more or less blocked by underwood, where the stream ran through a little hollow or gully. She succeeded in getting back after making several unsuccessful attempts.
“It is an excellent place,” said Audry, “but however shall we get him through that passage, it is so very narrow and so terribly long.”
“We might even have to leave him in the cave room to-night,” Aline replied, “but I think it would be a good idea to count our steps on the way back. It will be interesting to know how long it is, and we shall also be able to tell in future how far we are at any moment from the end.”
This they did and found that it was 1100 paces, which they reckoned would be as nearly as possible half a mile. Before they entered their bedroom again they experimented with the secret bolt that fastened the door, which acted perfectly, although, like everything else, they found that it would be the better for a little oil.
It seemed a long evening, but at last it was time to go to bed. The children went upstairs and waited impatiently until they were quite sure that every one was asleep. They had managed to secrete a little food to59 take with them and also a few pieces of firewood, and put a little more in the secret room as they made their way out. They had already begun to get somewhat used to the stair and found even the long secret passage less alarming. It was a clear night although there was no moon, and they made their way without difficulty to the hollow tree. They found Ian Menstrie stiff with cold and in great pain, but his senses almost preternaturally alert.
“I am so glad you have come,” he said. “I thought that something had prevented you and was wondering whether I could live here till the morning.”
Ian’s nature was a combination of strength and tenderness and was as likely to be exercising its force in protecting or shielding as in attacking. He had resolutely carried on the work that he felt to be his duty in spite of the most terrible risks and, when he had finally been captured and concluded that it was equally his duty to escape, he had carried out his plans with a ruthless determination; but, in the presence of these children, only the extreme tenderness of his character was called into play.
He looked at the two small figures and, in spite of his terrible plight, his heart smote him that they should be wandering about at night instead of getting their rest, and particularly Aline, who had been through so much already.
“It is good of you to come, and oh, I do hope that you will take no harm. How are you feeling, little one?” he asked, addressing Aline.
“Oh, I am all right,” she said brightly, for she did not wish him or Audry to know how her arm pained60 her, and indeed the excitement was in a way keeping her up. “It is you who are to be asked after; we have brought you a little to eat now and there will be something else when we get to the secret room.”
It was a painful journey. Ian set his teeth and tried to make the best of it and lean on his small guides as little as possible, but he was at the last gasp and he was a heavy burden. Luckily he had a naturally strong constitution and forced it to do its work by the exceptional strength of his will or he would have succumbed altogether. But he felt that what he had been through in the last two weeks had weakened his mental power and was glad that there was a chance for at least a respite before he would be called upon to face his tormentors again. In his present condition he felt that he could not answer for himself and the thought was too terrible. Supposing that they should put him on the rack once more and that he should deny his faith! Perhaps for the present at least he was to be spared this.
They very slowly made their way along the bed of the stream and eventually reached the cave. Aline helped Audry up through the trap door first, and then the children just succeeded in getting the injured man through, for he was becoming less and less able to help himself. Then began the long weary passage.
It was an exhausting process and Ian Menstrie seemed to be settling into a sort of stupor. They had gone about 700 paces when he fell right down. “I will be going on in a minute,” he answered. So they waited a moment or two and then asked him if he was ready. “Oh, I am coming in a minute,” he said once more. They61 waited again for a time but when they roused him, each time it was the same reply. “Oh, yes, certainly, I am coming just in a moment.” Finally there was nothing to be done but half carry him and half drag him along.
“I wish we had put him in the cave to-night,” exclaimed Audry.
“But we should never have got enough things there to make him comfortable,” said Aline. “I think we are really doing what is best and it will not be long now before we are there.”
Aline’s shoulder was excruciating, and she knew that it was bleeding again. Her other cut had also opened with the strain, and every limb in her little body ached as it had never done in her life. “I must be brave,” she said to herself; “what would father have done if he had been here?” The cold sweat stood on her brow but she never uttered a murmur and was anxious that Audry, who was fairly worn out herself, should not know how bad she was feeling. The last 50 yards she accomplished in intense agony and her thankfulness to reach the chamber was inexpressible.
They lit the fire and laid Menstrie on the bed. Then they gave him some water which seemed to revive him a good deal and he was able to thank them and to take food.
When he seemed to have come to himself Aline sat down on a chair. She leaned back and commenced to shiver, her teeth chattered till her whole frame shook. The others were frightened; it was clear that she was suffering from collapse. Luckily there was a fair supply of wood, as there had been several large pieces in the room when the children discovered it, and they had62 brought a quantity of small stuff. So there was soon a roaring fire and they were able to give Aline something hot to drink. Ian in spite of his own injuries did all that he could. They managed to shift the oak bed a little nearer to the fire and warmed blankets and wrapped Aline in them and laid her on the bed. Gradually the shivering passed away, but she lay there looking very white and shaken, with great black rings round her eyes, as if they had been bruised. Her wounds caused her considerable pain. Audry, who was a sweet hearted child but without the imaginative sympathy and intense self-sacrifice of her little cousin, toiled up the stairs and brought down some fresh linen. They then gently washed the wounds and put clean oil upon them, Ian cursing himself all the while because of his helplessness with his single hand, but able from many fighting experiences to direct Audry in the manipulation of the bandages.
“Is that more comfortable?” he asked when they had finished.
“Yes,” she said smiling, “I feel ever so much better and I think that I could go to sleep.”
Audry then assisted Ian to bandage his ankle, and under his directions also saw that the broken bone was all right. He then lay down on the bed and Audry curled herself in a great chair and went to sleep.
For Ian sleep was out of the question; and he lay there watching the firelight dancing on the faces of the slumbering children, the one beautiful with a robust health and well cut features and strongly built limbs, finely proportioned throughout; the other beautiful entirely beyond any ordinary beauty, with an extreme63 delicacy and subtlety in every line of her face as he had already noticed in her figure, yet never even suggesting the least touch of weakness. He had never seen such hair, which seemed to cover the bed. Its rich deep colour glowed with an extraordinary lustre and he noticed that her skin, unlike that of most people with red hair, was absolutely clear and marked by a strange translucent quality that was unique. One small arm was lying out on the coverlet with the sleeve tucked up. He had not realised before that a child’s arm could show so much variety of form and modelled surface and yet retain the essential slenderness and daintiness of childhood. She might well have been some fairy princess sleeping among the flowers.
Aline’s beauty undoubtedly had about it something supernatural. It was all in keeping with her manner and character. There was an atmosphere of another world about her of which every one who met her sooner or later became aware. It could not be put into words and could not be analysed. In a sense it was unnatural, but so far from repelling any one it had about it a mysterious, almost magical fascination that was irresistible.
Only the basest natures failed to be drawn by it, and even in their cases it was not that they did not feel it, but that they consciously withstood it as a power with which their whole nature was at variance.
Ian was devoutly glad that she was no worse and offered up a prayer of thankfulness that she was at least safe. As he looked at her he recalled her soft, not very pronounced, musical Scots accent, and his thoughts turned to the land of his birth. Her face too!—why64 had he not noticed it before, how strangely like it was in certain aspects to the face of his dreams, that still followed him wherever he went, although he had not seen it for thirteen years? He had, however, reluctantly to admit that this mere child’s face was even more beautiful. After all she too had really been only a child, although rather more than a couple of years older than himself, when he had worshipped her with all the fervour of a boy’s adoration and had suddenly lost sight of her when her parents had unexpectedly taken her away to be married. But the face had lived with him day and night, and no other face had ever come between him and his vision. Nor had the discovery long afterward,—that she had died soon after her child was born, ever inclined him to look elsewhere.
Aline moaned slightly and moved her head uneasily as though not quite comfortable. He smoothed the pillow for her and registered a vow that he would do all that he could to serve her, not only in return for what she had done for him, but for the sake of the chance resemblance to that one who had gone and who through all these years had meant so much to him.
And yet who was he to serve or to help any one?—a wanderer with a price upon his head; and he began to turn over the events of the last few years in his mind. All had promised so well with him and yet everything had been adverse. He had early distinguished himself both for his learning and his military skill, which drew down upon him the envy of his brothers, particularly the eldest, when, as a mere boy, he was one of the few who distinguished himself in the unfortunate battle of Pinkey Cleugh and he had looked forward to some recognition65 or advancement, but the jealousy of his brothers had made that impossible. Then he had fallen under the influence of George Wishart and incurred the undying anger of his father, and so great was the enmity of the family that finally he fled the country, first to England and afterwards, at Mary’s accession, to France and then to Italy, where he spent some years and followed first the calling of a smith. There he not only learned about the making of arms but acquired a considerable facility in the new art of swordsmanship as practised in Italy. Nor were his fingers idle in other ways; he executed designs first in metalwork and then in wood and other materials and became an accomplished draughtsman besides exhibiting great creative power. He might even have become one of the world’s great artists had not circumstances directed his energies into other fields.
10 The great Scottish reformer and martyr.
It was his brothers he knew who were behind his present trouble and it cut him to the quick. He had no enmity to them. It was not his fault that they had not distinguished themselves. For the sake of friendship he would willingly have obliterated his achievements and have given up everything to them; but of course that could not be, yet they would not forget. He had been for the last month in prison and strong as he undoubtedly still was, it was nothing to what he had been. Many a time had his slight wiry frame astonished his comrades by its extraordinary powers of endurance.
He was lightly built and excellently proportioned, with rather broad shoulders that particularly suited the66 costume of the day. He had on more than one occasion sat for artists in Italy, including Paolo Veronese himself, because of the exceptional beauty of his figure.
His escape had been almost a miracle, as he had no friends in the country and he had to think and carry on everything himself; he had been nearly caught again twice and he had shuddered as he thought of the fate of George Wishart whom he had himself seen strangled and burnt at the stake. It was true that for the moment he was safe, but for how long? He looked at the beautiful child and shuddered again. Suppose he should in any way implicate her. The priests would have no more pity upon her than upon himself. No, that he would not do. He would die rather than that. Would it not be best for him to go away at once rather than be a possible cause of injury to anything so gentle and brave and fair?
He rose up as the thought came to him; yes, he would go away; it should never be said that he had brought calamity upon a child. He stumbled across the floor and made his way down to the passage, but he had not realised how weak he was. Hitherto he had been buoyed up by excitement; now that that was over the pain was more than he could stand and he fainted and fell heavily to the ground.
When he again came to, he realised the impossibility of his getting away down the long passage, and he also began to wonder whether after all he might not be of more use if he stayed. He did not as yet know who the child was; it was clear that she was Scots and did not belong to the family of Holwick Hall; perhaps in the workings of Providence he had been sent there to67 be of some use to her. He could at least wait and find out a few things and then see what was best to be done. So he crawled back to the room again and waited for the morning.
To while away the time he took off his shoes to see that they were all right.
They were peculiarly made, with false inner soles of many thicknesses of parchment, covered with oil silk and several layers of paint.
These were the precious documents that had been purposely written in that shape. The false soles were secured by stout canvas and thin leather covers which formed part of the shoes. They could not be taken out without cutting the shoes to pieces.
As far as he could see they seemed to have sustained no damage in spite of the wetting.
There were three minute slits or peepholes in the corners and middle of the room. These were evidently intended as lookout places and were covered with small sliding shutters which he opened. The night seemed almost interminable, but at length the dawn began to break. He waited as long as he dared and then woke Audry.
“Where am I?” she exclaimed; “oh, I remember. How are you and how is Aline?” She rose as she spoke and went towards the sleeping figure. “I suppose we ought to wake her,—Aline, dear, wake up.”
Aline opened her eyes and gradually roused herself. She was certainly better than on the previous night, but still obviously very ill. However, there was nothing to be done but to get her upstairs somehow, and then there was no alternative but to leave her in bed.
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The children looked at each other. “Whatever shall we say?” said Audry.
“We must not say what is not true,” answered Aline.
“No, but we cannot tell them everything.”
“It is very difficult.”
“Could you not say that you fell on a rock, Aline?”
“That is not what I mean is difficult.”
“I do not understand.”
“I mean it is difficult to know how to speak the truth. Even if we do not say what is untrue we let them think wrongly.”
“Well, we cannot help that, Aline.”
“I do not know, it seems to me that it comes to the same thing as if we told them a falsehood.”
“Oh, bother them; if they ask no questions they will get told no stories.”
Aline’s mind was not satisfied; but, after all their calamities, fortune now favoured the children. There came a knock at the door and Elspeth, Audry’s old nurse, came in. “You are rather late this morning,” she said, and then she noticed that Aline was still in bed, “and one of you not up. Marry now, but it is a good thing for you that Mistress Mowbray has other things to think of this morning. She has just received an urgent letter from her sister at Appleby to say that she has been taken sick, and will she come over without delay. The serving man that brought the letter has only just now returned homeward.”
“What is the matter with Aunt Ann?” asked Audry.
“Oh, it is nothing to fret yourself about, hinnie,” the old woman went on, “but such an upset and turmoil in the house you never saw. Mistress Mowbray is carrying69 he were to be staying there the rest of her life; and Appleby only those few miles away too. Well, I must hurry away; I have more to do than I can manage.”
“Oh, nurse, can Aline stay in bed this morning? She is not very well; she hurt herself a little yesterday. I will bring up her breakfast; it is nothing serious.”
“All right, dearie,—it’s nothing serious?” she repeated as she heard Mistress Mowbray’s voice calling angrily from the bottom of the stairs. “I am glad of that, but I must go,” and she departed.
Aline had kept her face away so that Elspeth should not see how ill she looked. The children were much relieved when they heard the footsteps die away.
In a way Aline’s illness even helped them, as it enabled Audry to take up food without suspicion, and it was thus possible, owing to the general confusion in the house, to lay in a small supply for the other invalid below.
The next morning Aline was considerably better, having the marvellous recuperative power of childhood, but it was clear that she would not be herself for some time.
“You do look a sight, you know,” said Audry, throwing her arms round her neck. “Your eyelids and all round the eyes up to the eyebrow are still black. Whatever shall we do now, because nurse will certainly come up to-day?”
“She is a dear old thing and you can always get round her. I shall get up and go down and stand with my back to the light and keep my head low, and hope that no one will notice; then you must get nurse to let us have a holiday and take our dinner with us on to the hills.70 We can stay away till it is dark and then no one will see. I am ever so much better to-day and shall be all right to-morrow. We need only go a little way and it is a beautiful day, and I can lie in the sunshine. I wonder how poor Master Menstrie is,” she went on. “I am afraid that he will take a great deal longer to get well than I shall. You will of course look after him.”
Aline’s plan succeeded beyond expectation. Master Mowbray was in a hurry, as he wanted to ride over to Appleby for a few days and Nurse was busy with preparations. So Aline spent the long summer days on the moors watching the great white clouds roll over the hills and thinking of all that had happened in the last few days and the new responsibilities that had fallen upon her. It was clear that it would be a difficult matter to feed their guest, particularly as she was determined not to take food from the house. Perhaps it was true as Audry said, that people had no right to demand answers to any question that they might choose to ask; but certainly that did not justify one in taking what did not belong to one. She was just at the age when the intelligence begins to arouse itself and face the great problems of life and this was only one of the questions that stirred her young mind. There was also the matter of the heretics and again Audry had in her frank direct way supplied the answer of fair play and common sense.
Aline made up her mind that she would ask Master Menstrie about some of these things; at least, as Audry had said, there could be no harm in hearing both sides and she must judge for herself.
Audry went back after a while to see Master Menstrie; and Aline, when she had been out on the moor for a long71 time, returned to the Hall as the afternoon sun was getting low. Before going in, she sat down by the moat and looked across at the grey pile. The water seemed to be shallow at that point as though the bank had slipped in and yellow irises were growing at the edge.
Although the bulk of the building was little more than a hundred years old, except the early pele tower that had been built into the structure, time had laid its fingers upon it and it looked very mellow in the afternoon sun. The stone shingles of the roof were covered with golden lichen, while, behind the parapet of the little old tower, a piece of ivy had taken root and hung down through one of the crenellations trailing a splash of green over the grey wall. There was a stern beauty about it and the long line of narrow oilettes in the granary added to the somewhat fortress-like appearance.
As she sat there she saw a small figure approaching; it was Joan.
Aline beckoned to her and she came up shyly and Aline drew her down to a seat at her side. “I am so glad to see you out again, Joan; I do hope this is going to be a real lasting improvement,” she said, taking a little wasted hand in one of her own and putting the fingers of her other hand round the small wrist. “Why, there’s nothing there at all,” she went on, blowing at the hand and letting it fall; “see how easily I can blow it away; why, if I blew hard I should blow it off. You must be quick and get stronger.”
The little maid shook her head sadly.
“And you mustn’t look so doleful either,” and Aline kissed her in the corner of each eye which made Joan laugh.
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“There, that’s better; now you must forget yourself and I will tell you a story.”
At that moment Audry appeared on the scene. “Well, you are a pair, you two,” she said, with a kindly sparkle in her merry brown eyes; “you could not raise a spot of colour between you; but, Joan, it’s good to see you out at all, in spite of your pale cheeks. How are you and what did Master Barlow say?”
“I do not think he knew what was the matter; but he said that I ought to go away and see if other surroundings would help me. He was a kind old man.”
“We must see what we can do, Joan, when Master Mowbray comes back from Appleby.”
“I do not think it is good for either of you to be out in the evening air,” said Audry. “Come along in, Aline.”
“What is the matter with her, Mistress Audry?” said Joan.
“Oh, nothing,” said Aline; “I shall be all right to-morrow, but I must obey this tyrannous lady; good-bye, Joan.”
Audry had had difficulties with her patient. Menstrie so far from improving grew distinctly worse. His head was causing him great pain and the want of sleep made him a wreck. She had no scruples about the food like Aline, maintaining in her blunt way that it was the duty of the house to be kind to the stranger and that, if the other people did not do their duty, then she must do it for them whatever it involved. But she was very glad that Aline had so much improved after a few days as to be able to come and see the invalid with her.
He was obviously in a high fever and was gradually73 getting delirious. The old nurse took very little notice of them while her mistress was away and they would slip out on to the moors and make their way back to the secret room by the underground passage. As Aline grew strong Ian’s illness laid a greater and greater hold upon him. Aline insisted in sitting up with him the greater part of the night. There was not a great deal that she could do; but she prepared a concoction from a little yellow flowered plant that grew upon the moor and that was deemed good for fevers and administered this at regular intervals.
He spoke but rarely, but his eyes would follow her wherever she went. When his head was exceptionally bad he would complain of the burning and she would place wet cloths on his brow, or in fits of shivering she would do all that she could to keep him warm.
At length he seemed to take a distinct turn for the better. One night after a violent perspiration she was trying to change the bedclothes and make him more comfortable when he spoke to her quite clearly and in a voice unlike the almost incoherent ramblings of the last few days,—“What a wonderful little angel you are,” he said.
“I could not do less,” she replied.
“I see no reason why you should do anything at all; how long have you been tending me like this?”
“Audry has been attending you a great part of the time.”
“Then I have been ill for a long while.”
“Some little while,” she said, “but you are better now; I have been so frightened that you would never get well any more.”
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“But that would not matter to you.”
Aline laughed,—“Why then I should have had all my trouble for nothing.”
“But it would have been simpler to have taken no trouble at all.”
“Simpler, but how dull; do you know this is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me?”
“A poor kind of excitement,” he said; “why, you are looking very ill yourself; do not people notice it?”
“Oh, yes, they say, ‘You are a little scarecrow.’”
“Who say?”
“Mistress Mowbray, she has come home again to-day.”
“I did not know that she had gone away, but is that all that she says; does she not suggest doing anything?”
“Marry no, she only said, ‘Child, you have been eating too many good things while I am away; you must not get ill; I have a great deal of work for you to do. To-morrow you have to work hard after all this time of idleness.’ Now you must not talk any more; it is a great thing to hear you talk properly at all, and it would be foolish to let you make yourself ill again.”
He wanted her to go on; but again he saw that firm determined look in her manner that he had noticed before and knew that it would be useless to try and move her. “Well, little princess,” he said, “if those are your commands I suppose that they must be obeyed.”
“Certainly, sirrah, it is time that you went to sleep.”
It was fortunate for the children that Menstrie’s illness took a turn for the better when it did, for it would have been impossible for them to give him much time after Mistress Mowbray’s return. But it was clear that75 it would be a long time before he would be able to get about.
They both came in on the following night and found that while there was no doubt about the improvement, he was miserably weak and ill. Aline tried to prevent him from talking, but he was anxious to hear how things had gone with them. “Well, what have you been doing all day?” he said.
“We have been hemming great holland sheets,” said Aline.
“Well, that is not very exciting,” he said.
“More exciting perhaps than you think,” said Audry. “Mother was very cross, and Aline certainly had an exciting time.”
“Hush, Audry,” said Aline very softly.
“I shall not hush, Aline. I wish that mother would not act like that to you. Do you know,” she went on, “that whenever Aline made the stitches just the least little bit too big or turned down the hem the least bit too much or too little, she hit her. Aline, if I were you I would not stand it; I would tell my father.”
Ian half rose in his bed with anger and then fell back again. “There you see what you have done,” said Aline, as Ian went as white as the sheet. It was some moments before he was able to speak and the children watched him anxiously.
“What a shame,” he went on, in calmer tones.
“Well, we won’t talk about that now,” said Aline; “let us talk of something nicer. Master Mowbray is going to give me a falcon and I am going to ride like Audry.”
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“I thought that I heard you say that you did not care about riding, little one,” he said.
“I do not know that I do particularly, but Master Mowbray wished it for the sake of Audry. I do not think he cared about me one way or the other. I thought that it might help us in several ways in feeding you.”
“I am afraid I do not quite see that,” he said.
“Well, for one thing, the falcon would have to be fed and sometimes there would be things that I could give to you and I could get other things for the falcon instead. I do not like taking things from the house, and that is why I have tried as far as possible to snare you rabbits or catch fish in the river. So far we have done very well, but it is meal or bread that is the chief difficulty.”
“And do you think the falcon or the horse is going to get the bread?” he asked playfully.
“If you were not ill,” she said, shaking her little hand at him, “I would punish you.”
He caught the hand and kissed it. “Well, never mind, but I do not see how either the horse or the falcon is going to help you.”
“It is this way. If we go riding it will be a reason for going expeditions, and then we can make it an excuse to buy food. If I were to go and buy food round about here, there would be all manner of questions asked at once.”
“But, child, you have not any money, and if you had it would not be right to spend it on me.”
“But I have some; I have five pounds Scots that my father gave me long ago that I have been keeping in a77 safe place, and I have six florins that have been given me by other people.”
“You never told me that you were so rich,” said Audry. “Why, think what you could buy for all that!”
“Can you get down my jerkin, Audry?” asked Ian,—“Thank you! See if you can find in the inner pocket a leathern purse?—That’s right, now in that you will find ten gold rose angels. Take out two of them and let me know all that is spent on my account. I would not hear of you spending money on me.”
Aline demurred, but Menstrie would brook no opposition. So there was nothing to be done but take the money. After the children had gone Ian began to consider his new responsibilities. He already began to feel that Aline was in some way his special care. He had a peculiar power of seeing both sides of things and realised that there was always something to be said for each. But this never paralysed his action as it does with many. He remembered the Athenian view of the sin of neutrality and that the first duty is to make up one’s mind.
In action he was usually able to find a line not neutral, that is to say neither, but one that stood firmly and decisively for something even beyond the best of both and this he would carry through at all costs. He found this all the easier as his personality, his resolution and clear explanations made him a born leader and he generally compelled others to take his higher point of view. But this could not always be the case and then he would take the side that on the whole was the better. He had thrown in his lot with the protestant party, not by any means because he entirely agreed with them,—he often told them they were no better than those they78 opposed,—but he definitely saw more prospect of progress in that direction. He had an iron will, that is absolute self-control and the determined capacity that no difficulties, no obstacles and no suffering could cause to swerve. He was entirely free from the weakness of obstinacy, or of pleasing himself.
In more personal matters it was the same. At the present there were the claims of his country, the claims of his faith and the claims of this child. He loved children and nothing stirred him so much as to see a child illtreated.
How were these claims to be met? After all, were they so conflicting? The only real problem was that Aline was in England, while his other duties lay in Scotland. Clearly he must get her to Scotland. In whose charge to place her, he could arrange later. That much then was settled.
As he thought this, he distinctly heard a voice say,—“No, it is not.” He looked behind, but saw no one. The voice continued,—“She will become a heretic and then...?”
“Who is there?” he cried, sitting up in bed. There was silence and he heard no more, only he fancied he saw Wishart again in the fire and Aline was along with him. “I am overwrought,” he muttered; “that is impossible anyway, as poor Wishart died long ago. No, Aline,” he went on, “as long as my life can stay it, such shall never be,—never. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
He leaned back exhausted and soon fell into a troubled sleep. He remembered nothing when he woke, but found the sheet torn to shreds, as though he had fought some malign enemy.
NOT many days after, Aline went down to Peter’s cottage. Joan had again had a relapse and the physician had paid one or two visits. For the moment she was better and sitting up in bed.
Aline had brought some beautiful roses whose fragrance filled the whole place. Joan’s eyes quite sparkled with pleasure.
“Oh, Mistress Aline, how lovely!”
“I said you were to call me Aline, just as I call you Joan,” and Aline kissed the little thin hand that seemed almost transparent. “Now you must soon get well and be able to come and play games again; and see what I brought you to wear when you can run about.”
Aline’s own wardrobe was very scanty, but one day Master Richard had brought back from York a piece of good camlet which he had given to Aline as a special present. “May I do just what I like with it?” she had asked. “Of course,” he replied. So Aline had coaxed Elspeth to help her, and, with much excitement, had made Joan an attractive little gown. Aline was rather at a loss for some trimming that she wanted and Audry had found her one day taking some off one of her own garments. She had expostulated but Aline had only said,—“Oh, it looks all right; I have left some on the upper part. I do not mind plain things.”
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Joan’s gratitude was too great for words; she could only gently squeeze Aline’s hand.
As Aline sat by the bedside the door opened and a dark bent figure appeared against the light.
“Good-day, Peter,” she said, and catching sight of Aline she added, “and good-day to you, Mistress.”
Moll had once been a fairly tall woman, but like Peter was now bent, although not to so great an extent and was never seen without her stick. Her face, wrinkled and worn as it was, more from evil living than from actual age, as she was not really very old, still had some trace of its original beauty, but there was a cruelty and cunning in its expression that defied description. All the children were frightened of “Moll o’ the graves” and would flee at her approach.
“You have a sick bairn here, Peter,” she began, ignoring Aline, “and I have been wondering whether I could not help you.”
Peter looked as if the last thing in the world that he desired was old Moll’s help.
“You have something laid by under this stone,” she went on, tapping the hearth with her stick as she spoke; and Peter’s eyes seemed as if they would drop out of his head.
“Ah, you need not think to keep anything from me,” said the old crone; and suddenly turning round, she pointed her stick at Aline, “nor you, young Mistress, you have your secret that you wish no one to know,” she added vindictively.
It might have been merely a bow drawn at a venture, yet Aline felt absolutely terrified of the old woman and meditated running from the house, but the thought of81 Joan held her back. “No, and you need not think you can get away either,” said Moll, as though reading her thoughts. “You are by yourself this time,” and she interposed her gaunt figure between Aline and the door.
“Come, Peter,” she said, “what will you be giving me, or shall I lay a murrain on your sheep?”
“I’ll give you three silver crowns.”
“Ha! ha! ha!—three silver crowns for a child’s life,” and, dropping her stick and holding out her skinny hands like the claws of some obscene bird, she began slowly to shuffle over the floor toward Peter, who stood rooted to the spot quaking in mortal fear.
Nearer and nearer the old hag drew toward him, scraping her bare shrivelled feet over the floor.
Peter sank on his knees and crossed himself. “God’s blood,” he said, “I will give you what you ask.”
“Then give me twenty crowns,” she said, and waving her arms over the fire the flames turned blue and shot up as though to lick her hands.
She then opened a small pouch at her girdle and taking a pinch from it threw it on the fire and a thick cloud of white smoke ascended and filled the room with a pungent odour and then circled round the room in fantastic shapes.
“In the smoke, in the clouds, I see the future writ,” she said; “I see three children and their fates are intertwined. Ah, the first passeth, the second passeth, the third remaineth. I see a great treasure. I see trouble. I see joy and a great darkness.” Then turning to Peter she said: “Keep your crowns this time; I can do nothing; the child must go,” and she laughed a low cruel laugh,—“and your fate,” she said, turning to Aline82 with a diabolic grin, “is like unto hers; but your path is through the fire; yet there is joy and prosperity after strange days for your little friend up at the Hall.” She laughed again, a blood curdling fiendish chuckle, and grasping her staff she hobbled to the door and was gone so swiftly that they could hardly believe their eyes.
Poor little Joan had fallen back senseless and it was some time before Aline could bring her round. Was the old harridan deliberately trying to frighten the child to death or could she really in some way foretell the future?
The effect in any case was extraordinary and Aline had to pull herself together before she felt equal to the walk home.
“What does she mean by my path is through the fire?” she asked Audry, when she met her in the courtyard.
“Don’t think about it, don’t talk about it. Aline, you terrify me.”
“I do hope she has not done Joan any serious harm anyway,” said Aline. “But come, we must get ready for supper.”
Late in the evening as the family was seated in the great hall and the servants had retired, just as the children were going to bed, Richard Mowbray came in from going round the house as his custom was to see if everything was all right. He seemed to be in a very irritable mood and Mistress Mowbray asked him what was the matter.
“Matter, Eleanor,” he said, “you know very well I am worrying about that cup. It’s the third thing that has disappeared this month and I seem to be no nearer finding out than we were before. I am fairly certain83 too that money has gone the same way. Beshrew me but I would give a goodly sum to find the knave.”
“I think you might keep your discussions for another time,” said his wife icily, glancing at Aline as she spoke; “we do not want our affairs discussed by every stranger.”
“There are no strangers here, woman,” he said. “The child is a Mowbray which is more than you are yourself; her great grandmother was my grandfather’s only sister. Old James Mowbray who built this house loved her more than his son and if the old man had had his way, it is likely enough that the lassie would be the Mistress of Holwick. Woman, you are too jealous. The child shall always have a roof to her head as long as I am Master of Holwick.”
Master Mowbray was not particularly fond of Aline, although he was beginning to fall under her spell, but he had a sort of rough sense of justice, which was quite inexplicable to his wife; a trait of his character that had descended in a marked degree to his little daughter.
“Anyway it is time for the children to go to bed,” said Mistress Mowbray. “Run along, both of you, and, mind you, not a word of what you heard just now.”
The children went upstairs and naturally could not help discussing between themselves what Richard Mowbray had been saying. “I should like to help Master Mowbray,” said Aline. “It seemed to upset him very much.”
“We wanted some excitement, Aline,” said Audry, “and now we seem to have more than enough, what with a heretic and a thief. I wonder what Father would do for us if we could find the thief for him.”
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Consequently for the next few days the children were on the alert to see if they could discover anything. When they went down to visit Ian they told him the story and the three discussed it together.
“Anyway it does not matter telling you,” said Aline to Ian, “because you are not a real person.”
“And why am I not a real person, pray?” said Ian.
“Oh, you do not belong to the world at all; you never see anybody and live down here; you are only a sort of figure in our dream,” said Aline playfully.
“That’s rather a shadowy kind of existence,” he said, “but it’s nice to be dreamed into existence by such delightful people.”
“Look here, you two,” said Audry, “talk a little common sense. What are we going to do about this thief?”
“I think it must be some one in the house,” Aline remarked. “I do not think any one could get over the moat.”
“People like this lady would think nothing of swimming the moat,” said Ian.
“People like this lady would not do anything of the kind,” said Aline; “they could not even get out of the water on the inner side at all, as it is a perfectly straight wall all round, and even if they did, they would go drip, drip, drip, wherever they went and we have seen nothing like that.”
“They could take off their clothes,” objected Audry.
“Yes, and if they were disturbed,” Aline continued, “and had to escape in a hurry, I suppose they would not think they looked a little conspicuous and suspicious, eh?”
“Where is the silver kept?” asked Ian.
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“Most of it,” said Audry, “is kept in the treasury, the little room near the gateway where the secret passage goes. I expect that is partly the reason for the passage; so that if the owner ever had to flee from the house in time of danger, he would come back and get his valuables without risk; but what an opportunity a thief would have who knew of the passage!”
Aline knit her brows and thought for some time. Menstrie, who was very clever with his chalk, was making sketches of her. “What a very thoughtful lady!” he said.
“Oh, is not that beautiful?” exclaimed Audry. “It is as beautiful as you are, Aline dear. Where did you learn about drawing, Master Menstrie?”
It was a charming little head with bold free lines and full of expression, very like an Andrea del Sarto.
“Oh, when I was in Florence and Venice,” said Ian; “it was a great time for me and I learned many things that it would have been almost impossible to learn over here. I was lucky enough to get to know both Paolo Veronese and Tintoretto as they called him, but I like the Florentine work better still. I often think I might have been an artist, but I have too many other responsibilities.”
Aline looked up at this point. “Yes, that is wonderful. Father was very fond of drawing and had several friends who were artists. There was Master Lindsay, who did a beautiful portrait of mother, but do you know I do not believe he could have drawn as well as that; it is so bold and free and yet sensitive and delicate in its details. His work was much more cramped and over-elaborated. No,” she said, holding the drawing at arm’s86 length, “I am sure he could not have done it nearly so well.”
“Well, never mind about the drawing,” said Menstrie; “what were you thinking about?”
“I was thinking that the theft could not very well have taken place at night. If it had, probably many more things would have gone. But some one may have slipped into the little room for a moment when the old seneschal’s back was turned. We might go along and find out when Edward is there, whether we can hear and know what goes on from the secret passage.”
“It is just about now that Edward fetches the silver,” said Audry.
“Come along then.”
So the two children jumped up and ran to the door. “Good-bye,” said Aline, waving her hand, “wish us luck.”
Ian watched them go and then fell into a reverie. What a strange thing it was that chance should have brought him to Holwick! He looked at the drawing which was still on his knee. “Leonardo would have given something to draw her head,” he mused. “But neither he nor Raphael could have done it justice. Yes, she is like her, very like, and yet more beautiful. Who could have believed that any one could be more beautiful? This child’s father must have been handsome as she says. I wonder in what way I am to be of service to her. It’s a pity that she is of the old faith. Somehow I feel that that is going to be a difficulty. I should find it very hard to get any assistance if it were needed. The other side would not look at me and my side would not look at her. I wonder if they would even help me87 myself,” he pondered. “I do not hold with most of them by any means. I fancy that child’s father would have been more to my liking. How narrow and unkind they all are. Think of a Catholic like Sir Thomas More, a very saint of a man, coming to the block. Will nothing ever soften men’s hearts? John Knox is all very well, but he’s dour. No, John, my friend, Plato was quite right; if you do not understand beauty you will have to serve a little apprenticeship before St. Peter will open the gates. Harmony not strife,—the Beauty of Holiness,—think of it, Master John, think of it! With what humility and yet with what ecstasy we shall worship in that presence.
“Ah, child,” he went on, “you are indeed the handiwork of God and, as Plato says, I do pass through you to something more.”
As he spoke the vision of the child seemed to shape itself before his eyes. Her little feet were bare as when he saw her first and she was stretching out her beautiful arms toward him. Her face shone with a strange light and then gradually he felt himself lifted up and the vision changed, becoming more ethereal and more beautiful, till his heart stood still. It was no longer a child, it was no longer even human beauty at all. It was altogether transcendent.
He rose slowly and then knelt down. “Now I know,” he said, “this is the heart’s adoration, this is worship. I never knew before.” He bowed down utterly humbled and yet at the same time exalted and a voice seemed to say,—“I am that I am.” He felt as one who is purified as in a fire and then gradually a sense of peace stole over him.
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He knelt there in a rapture for a long time until at length the vision faded slowly away. But he realised that in some strange fashion new strength had been given to him and that the temptations of life were shrinking into littleness.
Meanwhile Aline and Audry made their way along the passage. It was daylight so they felt that their light would not be seen. When they got to the end they could hear perfectly and even see a little bit through a tiny crack. They saw Edward, the seneschal, come in and take out the great salt and the nef and then he carefully fastened the door. After a while he came back and fetched some of the other things.
When the children returned to Ian, they both exclaimed,—“Oh, you are looking so much better.”
For a moment he did not speak; he was watching Aline as she unconsciously glided down the room with a sort of dancing step, humming a tune and slowly waving her arms. She seemed filled with a new sacredness, a new unapproachable otherworldliness; it was an apotheosis of childhood.
“Well, you have come back to me,” he said at length. “What did you discover?”
“Not a great deal,” Aline answered, “but we can see through a chink and we may some day see the thief himself.”
“I am afraid that we shall never catch him,” said Audry, “and what is the use of troubling about it? The thing is gone now and what is done is done.”
“No, it might come back,” protested Aline, “and I shall not give up hope yet awhile. Come along, you have got to finish that piece of tapestry and it’s no use89 saying what is done is done, because what is done is no use, unless you do some more.”
Both laughed and ran out.
They worked at the tapestry in the solar. Mistress Mowbray was there engaged in the same occupation. By and by her husband came in. “I suppose you have found out nothing about that cup,” she remarked.
“No,” said Master Richard, “and meseemeth I am not likely to do so. Edward is confident that it cannot have been taken from the treasury.”
“Humph! He may say so. Look you now, Richard, if I were you I should get rid of Edward. Turn him out of doors.”
“Do you think that Edward has taken it?” said her husband, looking surprised.
“Why, who else could have taken it? It’s as clear as daylight. I cannot see wherefore you hesitate.”
Richard Mowbray gazed steadily in front of him for a long time, stroking his pointed beard. “Yes, I think it must be so; I shall do as you suggest. Edward shall leave.”
“I am sure Edward did not do it,” said Audry impulsively.
“Nonsense, wench,” said her father, “what do you know about it?”
“Oh, well, it has nothing to do with me, but it’s hard on the old man if he did not do it,” Audry replied. “Come along, Aline; I’m tired of this tapestry; we’ve done enough. I want you to read to me. May we go, mother?”
“Yes, yes, run away, both of you”; and, lest Audry’s remark should have had any effect, she added, to her husband;—“It90 will be an excellent plan in many ways. Edward is getting past his work in any case. I shall be very glad to have some one else.”
“Certainly, Eleanor, it shall be as you wish.”
Audry had run on. Aline had risen and stood irresolutely looking at the Master of Holwick. “But, Cousin Richard, you will wait a bit, won’t you?” she said coaxingly.
“Why, child?”
“Because it might not be Edward, and, probable as it seems, you cannot be certain.” She rose and put her arm round him and in her most bewitching way added,—“You will think it over, won’t you? I know I am only a little girl, but what would you think, Cousin Richard, if afterwards it turned out that you were wrong?”
“Aline,” shouted Mistress Mowbray, “I will not have you interfering. Edward shall leave at once. We cannot have a thief in the house.”
“It isn’t just, Mistress Mowbray. You do not know that he is a thief; you have no proof.”
“Wench, I can dismiss my servants when I please, thieves or not thieves.”
In addition to the claims of justice Aline felt a definite feeling of antagonism rising in her, a touch of the fighting instinct. “Of course you can do as you please,” she said, “but that does not make it fair.”
“I tell you Edward shall go; he is getting too old and that is enough reason.”
“Richard,” she continued, “am I mistress of this house or is that skelpie? The man is only a servant and I can treat him as I like. I am within my rights.”
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Aline could not resist going on, yet she hated the whole thing; she felt that her attitude was unbecoming, if not impertinent; but she could not let Edward go without a struggle, nor could she abandon a fight which she had once begun; that was not human nature. “You may be within your rights,” she said, “and he may be only a servant; but that is just it;—if you belonged to the servant class yourself that sort of reason might be enough, but ‘noblesse oblige’ as father used to tell me. That is so, is it not, Cousin Richard? and we must investigate the case before Edward is sent away.”
Eleanor Mowbray flushed crimson; Aline had found the weak spot in her armour. The vintner’s daughter was not a lady, but the one thing in life that she desired was to be thought one.
“Yes, child,” said Master Richard, for the remark had touched his proper pride. “Yes, keeping within his rights is good enough for common people. But gentle blood demands more than rights. It has higher standards altogether. It is a matter of honour, not of rights. Many things are right but they are not honourable. The churl does not know the meaning of honour. By my troth, lassie, you remind me of my mother’s father, the Duke of Morpeth, who used to say that aristocracy was the pride of humility, the pride that could not be demeaned by humbling itself, the pride that could not lower itself by standing on its rights. Our Lord, he used to say, was the noblest knight and the first gentleman of chivalry. Ah, little maid,” he went on, “you must forgive me my reminiscences; the serious things of life cannot be left out.”
“No, Cousin Richard, I’m listening.”
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“I remember,” he continued, “how he used to quote ‘He that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not shall never be moved,’—‘qui facit haec non movebitur in aeternum.’ That was his illustration of the principle in practice; the vulgar man sticks to his bargain or his promise; the gentleman goes entirely beyond his promise and does what is expected of him, whether he had given his word or not. The vulgar man tries to wriggle out of an engagement if it does not suit him; the gentleman stands to the most trivial engagement, even if there is no formal promise, though it may cost him much sacrifice. Honour compels him, ‘noblesse oblige.’ The man of poor blood has no honour; he merely has honesty and he thinks the gentleman is a fool. He has not climbed high enough to see.
“You are right, little one; there would be nothing wrong in dismissing Edward; we have no promise, no contract: we may even act to our own hurt by keeping him, if he really should be the thief, but honour demands it. The matter shall be thoroughly investigated before we do anything with Edward.”
Aline having gained her point ran away. She had not intended at first definitely to withstand Mistress Mowbray. However, Master Richard had agreed with her and she dismissed the matter from her mind.
Not so Mistress Mowbray. She was mortified and she was not going to forget it. Besides the child had committed the unpardonable sin of showing that she was a lady and making it equally clear that she, Eleanor Mowbray, belonged to a lower class. Mistress Mowbray was learning her lesson.
Day after day the children used to go at the proper93 hour and once or twice Edward did leave the door unlocked for a few moments; but they never saw any one come in and finally began to lose heart and feel that they must give it up as hopeless.
IAN was alone in the secret room. He had been busy writing and a great pile of papers lay before him. He was tired and felt he could write no more, so he picked up some sketches he had made of the children. They would often come down and sit for him and he had gathered quite a collection. What a wonderful pair they were. Audry was the easier to draw. She was not quite so tantalisingly subtle with her laughing brown eyes and roguish lips. The face was clearly cut, with decided character, from the well defined brows and the strongly marked forms about the eyes down to the firm determined little chin. “Were it not for a certain pair of faces,” he said, “that haunt me day and night I should have said that there could not be anything more beautiful.” He then turned to the sketches of Aline and put them aside one by one impatiently;—why could he not catch the elusive swing of those graceful poses? It was no use; they were unattainable. He was looking discontentedly at a sketch of her face and wondering whether any one could ever draw the infinite variation in the finely modelled form of Aline’s mobile lips, when Audry came in.
He put the drawing down by the papers on the table.
“Writing again,” said Audry; “you are always writing. I cannot think what it is all for.”
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“One must be doing something,” he answered.
She hardly seemed to heed his reply. “It is nice to have some one to come to,” she said; “everything is all wrong just now.”
“What is the matter, dear?” he asked, noticing that the child had been crying.
“Oh, I have such a tale to tell you about Aline. You know that mother thought that the thief was Edward, and father has been spending ever so much time and trouble over it and has practically proved that it could not be Edward; because, though Edward may have taken the cup, there was some money that went one day when Edward was away from Holwick. So mother must needs get it into her head that it was Aline.”
“How utterly ridiculous!” said Ian.
“Yes, and at first I do not think she really thought so; it was only because she does not like Aline and is particularly angry with her just now, because it was Aline who was the cause of her being shown up as wrong about Edward; and——and,” the child went on sobbing as she spoke,—“it was partly my fault. Mother knows I love Aline and I was rude to her the other day and she knows it punishes me more than anything else for her to be unkind to Aline”; and here Audry quite broke down.
“Do not cry, dear child,” said Ian, stroking her thick brown locks. “Come, tell me all about it and we’ll make a nice plan to put things right for Aline.”
Audry and her mother never got on very well together. Both were headstrong and impulsive, but whereas Audry’s nature was generous and kind, the lady of Holwick was a hard selfish woman. She loved her daughter96 in her selfish way, but power was her one desire, and she wanted entirely to dictate the course of her life for her; and even in the things of little importance was apt to be tyrannical. Aline had become a cause of much contention between them, and Eleanor Mowbray had now added to her natural dislike of Aline a desire to spite her daughter by ill-treating her little friend.
“Well, you know that Aline is in the habit of taking things to the sick people round about,” Audry went on, when her grief had a little subsided, “and old Elspeth generally acts as almoner. Mother, however, has interfered lately, and has said that she will not allow it without her permission and that, she will hardly ever give,—never, for the people that Aline most cares about. So Aline has been buying things with her own money and you know she has not much.”
“No, poor child, it must be very sad for her.”
“Indeed it is, Master Menstrie, but what has happened is sadder still. I met her coming back from the Arnsides yesterday, and some one must have told mother that she had been there; for mother said I was to tell Aline to go and speak to her directly she came back. I warned her how angry mother was and Aline asked me what it was all about. I said that I was not absolutely certain, but that I thought it was because she imagined that Aline had been taking things from the Hall. I went with her to see mother,” Audry went on, “and I never saw mother so furious, and you know how angry she can be.”
“I cannot say that I do,” said Ian, “I have never even seen her.”
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“Well, anyway, she was purple with wrath and would not allow Aline to say a word,—‘What do you mean, you dirty little thief,’ she said, ‘taking things that do not belong to you and giving them to your good-for-nothing friends, you little beggar-brat, you? Here you are living on charity and you must needs steal things from under our very noses.’
“When she paused to take breath, Aline told her that she had bought the things with her own money. But that only made mother more angry than ever. ‘What, you dare to lie to me, money indeed, what money have you, you miserable child of a penniless wastrel? Your father was never more than a petty laird at the best and he had not even the sense to keep the little he had. If you have any money we all know where you got it. No wonder you were so certain that Edward had not taken it,’ she said with a sneer.
“Aline drew herself up in that stately way that she has. She took no notice of what mother said about her being a thief, but answered;—‘My father was a gentleman, your father did not bear arms. You may call me what you like, but I will not have my father spoken of like that.’”
“Dear little princess,” said Ian.
“Mother nearly choked with rage and almost screamed; ‘You insolent hussie, he was a wretched good for nothing ne’er do weel, or he would not have left you unprovided for.’
“Then for the first time in my life I saw Aline lose her temper. It was not like mother at all, but a sort of unnatural calm. She turned as white as chalk and said very slowly and softly, almost hissing the words;-‘Woman,98 you are not fit to have cleaned father’s shoon. Leave the dead alone.’
“Mother rushed at her, calling her thief and liar, and I tried to stop her, but she hit me and sent me down full length upon the floor. She snatched up a heavy riding strop and beat Aline furiously with it. I implored her to stop but she only hit out at me. I think she was out of her mind with passion.
“Oh, I am so unhappy. I try to love mother and it is so difficult. I wish that I had never been born.”
Ian did his best to comfort the child and after a time she calmed down and said that she would go and find Aline.
When she had gone Ian paced rapidly up and down the room, going over the miserable story in his mind. Certainly there was one good thing in his not escaping the first night as he had intended; he was at least here to try and make plans with her to help her, but how was it to be done? The more he thought the more hopeless he became. Delighted, as he knew his mother would be to look after the child, he knew that as long as his father lived it was impossible; he would find out who had sent her and turn her out of the house or worse than ever—and Ian felt his flesh creep—his father might think that she was a heretic too and then.... Again the vision of Aline burning in the flames rose vividly and distinctly before him, as though it were an actual sight. Ian groaned in agony. “O Lord,” he cried, “not that, not that!” He was nearly beside himself; but as the vision passed away he grew calmer. He still walked rapidly to and fro, however, and clenched and unclenched his hands till the nails dug into the flesh. Here was this99 sweet child, the sweetest thing that he had ever seen in his life, for whom he was ready to do anything,—he was perfectly willing to suffer all things for her, he was willing to die for her if need be, not only to save her life, but even to make her happy, if he could make sure of it,—and yet, here he was, absolutely unable to do anything at all, not even to save her from one jealous woman. It was pitiable, it was almost ludicrous; he who had escaped the forces of the inquisition and the united endeavours of the whole countryside, to be foiled in this way by one woman.
Then he clenched his teeth. No. There must be a way and he must find it: “And if there is not one,” he said, bringing his fist down on the top of a chair with a crash, “I will make one.” The chair broke under the blow. “Exactly so,” he said; “if they will not yield they shall break.”
After a time Audry returned with Aline. The child did her best to be cheerful, but it was obviously impossible; so Ian thought that it would be best for her to relieve her feelings by talking about it, if she could not put the subject away from her mind altogether.
“Everything sad seems to have happened all at once,” she said. “Mistress Mowbray said such dreadful things about father and now she has been telling every one that I am a thief and poor little Joan does not seem able to get over the effects of Moll’s visit.”
“You mustn’t pay too much attention to what mother says,” Audry said softly. “She loses her temper just as I do and I do not think that she really meant anything that she said about Captain Gillespie. It was only that she was so angry.”
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“Well, that is what I minded most, at least at the time. After all, poor father has gone and it does not really matter to him now what she says, and it does matter to me when people think that I am a thief. Every one seemed to be staring at me as I passed to-day.”
“I think that must be mainly your imagination, little one,” said Ian, toying with a tress of the wonderful hair. “No one who really knew you could believe it for a moment, and the other people do not really matter, do they?”
Aline was a little bit consoled, but she said rather pitifully,—“All the same I wish we could find out the thief.” Then a fresh cloud seemed to gather and she went on; “Do you think that ‘Moll o’ the graves’ really can tell the future? She said that little Joan and I were going to die,—and what did she mean when she said that my path was through the fire?”
Ian shivered and caught his breath as he thought of his vision, but he spoke as calmly as he could. “Oh, one cannot say; I am afraid that the awful old witch is trying to frighten the child to death.”
“Yes,” said Audry, “they say that she and Joan’s mother, Sarah Moulton, had a terrible quarrel about something and many people think that it was old Moll who terrified her into her grave and that she wants for some reason to do the same with the child.”
“The best thing,” said Ian, “is to take no notice of her. We must not give way to superstition. It is only by allowing her to frighten us that she can really do anything. What were you going to tell us about Joan, Aline?”
“Well, she just seems to get weaker and weaker. I101 met Master Barlow to-day, who had come over again from Barnard Castle to see her and I said, ‘Of a truth, what is the matter with Joan?’ and he replied, ‘I do not know what is wrong with her, little maid; but I fear she has no chance in that abode.’
“So I feared greatly and asked him what might be done and I told him what Master Richard had said about sending her to Barnard Castle. That, he said, was good, but he would suggest better. He knew a very learned physician in Durham and also a good woman who would house the child if Master Mowbray would be at the expense of sending her, it being a far cry, nigh upon forty mile. Yet he did not hold out much hope even then.”
“Oh, I am sure father will do that,” said Audry, “and then you will see little Joan coming back well and strong. Come, what you want is a run in the fresh air.”
“I want to go down to Janet Arnside’s again, so I will go now.”
The children left the room and climbed the secret stair. On their way out they turned along beside the moat, which always had a certain fascination for Aline. There were now king-cups and bog myrtle growing on the outer bank, where the part of the wall had broken away, and sheltered from the wind on the south side, water lilies were floating in the dark water. It was a still, lovely day and the beautiful walls and windows of the old Hall were perfectly reflected in the wide expanse of the black mirror, where also could be seen the clear blue of the sky and the great cumulus-clouds.
“I love this old moat,” said Aline.
“I cannot say that I do; yet I am unable to say why, but I always think it looks cruel and I feel that something102 terrible might happen in that deep water, some unsolved mystery, I do not know what it is.”
“Yes, I see what you mean, but at the same time it looks kindly and protecting as it goes round the house; it might be cruel, but somehow I feel too that it might be kind.”
“Well, I must go and darn my hose,” said Audry, “and you said you wanted to go down and see Janet Arnside and her boy.”
Audry picked up a large stone as she went, and threw it into the water; it fell with a heavy sullen splash and the sound echoed back from the walls. Aline stood a moment and watched the widening rings till they gradually died away, and then turned down toward the hamlet.
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THE HALL FROM N. W. SHOWING PELE-TOWER GRANARY AND LEDGE
JANET ARNSIDE was a widow and lived in a small cottage not far from the Hall. She had a son who had been very ill; and Aline had been in the habit of coaxing Elspeth to get her small delicacies to take round to them as they were very poor, or she would buy things with her own money.
When she reached the cottage the old woman came forward and seized her by both hands. “Bless your bonnie face,” she said, “I am glad to see you.”
“How is John getting on?” said Aline.
“Oh, he’s quite a new creature, thanks to all you have done for us, my dear. When I see him swinging along with great strides I say to myself,—now if it had not been for our little St. Aline where would my boy have been?”
“Oh, you must not thank me, Janet, and I really do not like you to call me that, you must thank Elspeth and Master Mowbray.”
“Ay, true, hinnie, the Master has been very good and has always said that we were welcome to a few things, but, there now, when I asked Mistress Mowbray, she said that she had something else to think of than attend to any gaberlunzie body that came round the doors. And where should I have been with my laddie105 if it had not been for you with your sweet face and your kind heart?”
Even Janet Arnside realised that Aline’s was no ordinary beauty as she watched the lightfooted graceful child moving round her room and setting things straight, or helping her to cook for her sick boy, or sitting, as she was then, with the sunshine coming through the open door and throwing up the outline of her beautiful form against the dark shadows within the cottage.
“Ah, but Mistress Mowbray is very busy, Janet, she has a great deal to manage in that huge place. It is Elspeth, dear old Elspeth, who looks after all the sick folk and you should try and go up and thank her, now that your son is better and you are able to leave him.”
“Ay, Mistress Aline, that should she,” said a voice from the door as John entered, “but it is our little mistress here that should be getting most of the thanks, I trow.” The boy pushed back the little window shutter as he spoke that he might the better see the child. She was for him his conception of the heavenly angels and during his long illness he used in his delirium to confuse her with the messengers from above who were to take him to the other land. He had been ill for a weary while and had had more than one relapse but she had been a constant visitor when opportunity allowed, and had often soothed him to sleep when even his mother could do nothing. He worshipped Aline in a curious half-fatherly way, although he was only some four years her senior, and the dream of his life at that time was to be of assistance to her some day.
Aline was just on the point of going when they heard rough angry voices passing along the road, so she shrank106 back into the shadowy recesses of the cottage;—“I tell you what it is,” one of the voices was saying, “if you do not help me I’ll see that you never forget it.”
“Now, there you are again,” the other voice replied, “you never can keep a civil tongue in your head.”
“Why that is Andrew Woolridge and Thomas Carluke,” Aline exclaimed. “What are they doing down here?”
Andrew and Thomas were two of the men from the Hall and Aline knew that at this time of day they ought to be at work.
“They are up to no good I’ll be bound,” said Janet.
“Andrew Woolridge seems to be doing a good thing for himself somehow, mother,” said John. “I wonder where he got all that meal he has been bringing home from the mill lately; I saw him with a boll early this morn and he brought two bolls yesterday and two the day before.”
“Ay, John, and I saw him the day before that with a boll.”
“He must have enough for the winter and some to sell too, if he has been going on at that rate, mother.”
“Ay, that must be, but I should not like to be the one to ask him where he got the oats he has been so busy carrying to the mill.”
“It is time I was going,” said Aline, and bidding them good-bye, she turned homeward, pondering on her way what she had heard.
“I fancy that the oats will come from Holwick,” she thought to herself. “I wonder if he is still taking them,” and she resolved that she would herself keep an eye on Andrew and Thomas.
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She had not long to wait. That very evening she managed to slip out near the granary at dusk when the outside servants went home. Thomas slept in the hall, but she saw him going to the gate and talking to Andrew very quietly.
The moat ran round the east side of the Hall, but there was a narrow ledge of stone at the foot of the wall on that side, some eight feet above the water, which went from the northeast corner where the granary was, as far as the drawbridge. It was possible to climb on to it from the drawbridge and walk along it with some difficulty. What purpose it was intended to serve was not clear. The drawbridge was never drawn up till the last of the servants had departed. Andrew went outside, but dark as it was, Aline without coming near, saw that apparently he did not cross the bridge. Thomas ran back and made his way to the granary. Aline followed, her heart beating violently, and saw him produce a key and unlock the granary door. She waited a moment wondering which would be the best thing to do and then decided to go back to the drawbridge. She turned round and was just in time to see the dark figure of Andrew emerge from the left and cross the bridge with a heavy bundle on his shoulder and vanish into the night. It was all very quietly managed, he had evidently crept along the high ledge, and as Aline passed through the archway to the upper quadrangle she heard Thomas behind her breathing heavily, but she did not look round.
At first she thought that she would go and tell Master Mowbray at once, but then she hesitated. In those days it might be a hanging matter for Andrew and she also108 had some scruples about playing the part of an eavesdropper. She finally decided that she would speak to Andrew herself, but was very nervous about it; as Andrew was a great big man and from what she knew of him and from the way she had heard him speak to Thomas on the previous night, she guessed that he would stop at nothing.
She watched for him the next day, but no opportunity presented itself. He was always with the other servants. But late in the evening she saw him in the quadrangle evidently waiting for Thomas. She was shaking with excitement and the darkness added to her nervousness, but she approached him and said in as steady a voice as she could muster, “Andrew, I want to speak to you. It is something very serious; there has been grain taken from the granary.”
“What of that?” he replied, determined to brazen it out.
Aline had hoped that her point blank assertion would have made him confess at once and the way would have been easier for her; it was very difficult to go on with this great burly bullying ruffian scowling at her. However, her mind was made up and she had to go through with it. “I know who has taken it,” she said firmly, “and I want you to promise me that you will not take any more and that also you will replace as much as you have taken away.”
“Oh, do you, my fine young lady? You are not the mistress of this Hall, not by a long way, I reckon. Who are you indeed? A penniless Scot that no one would listen to. I should like to see you go with your tales to Mistress Mowbray. She’d soon turn you upside down109 and spoil that pretty skin of yours,” he growled coarsely.
“But I shall find it my duty to tell Master Mowbray,” said Aline.
“Oh, that is the way the land lies, you miserable tell-tale, is it?”
Aline felt herself blush, as the retort stung, but she knew she was right, and she only said, “But I should not tell any one if you would give back the grain.”
“Would you not?” he said fiercely; “well, I’ll see you never get the chance, you little she-devil.” As he spoke he stepped forward and placed his great hand over her mouth and lifting her up as though she were a mere nothing, he ran with her to the gate and on to the middle of the drawbridge. “No one will miss you in this house, you blethering babe, and they will just think that you have somehow fallen in, playing round in the dark. Mistress Mowbray would give me a month’s pay, if I dared ask for it, you wretched brat.”
She was absolutely powerless in his strong arms and he raised her above his head and flung her into the moat. She struck the side of the bridge as she fell and then dropped into the dark water. Andrew did not wait, but ran some way into the gloom of the night and then stood to listen whether any hue and cry was raised. Not a sound was to be heard and after about a quarter of an hour he dimly could distinguish his fellow servants walking home. Obviously they were unconscious that anything unusual had happened and he was able to breathe freely as he muttered to himself, “That was well done, she will tell no tales now.” He crept back to the moat and peered in. All was still and black and the110 moat gave no sign of the horrible deed that had just taken place in its waters. Hardened wretch that he was, he could not help a shudder as he thought of what lay under that inky surface.
ANDREW argued with himself as he walked homeward. No one could suspect him. No one? Wait! There was one. What about Thomas? Thomas was not a man to be trusted. At any moment he might find it to his own interests to tell what he knew. Andrew began to be afraid. “I was a fool,” he said, “after all. I must escape, escape at once; I will not go home.”
He was not very clear in what direction to go. His original home was near Carlisle, but for that reason he avoided it. He would go south, he would make his way over the hills to Brough and Kirkby Stephen and then strike for Lancaster.
He had plenty of money and was able to secure horses at Brough so that he actually got as far as Lancaster the next night. Here he thought he might escape notice and right thankful was he to get to his bed.
But he could not sleep. He was overtired and turned restlessly from side to side, now drawing up his feet, now stretching them out. As he lay there the thought of the black, glistening, silent moat returned to him. “Meddlesome brat,” he muttered to himself, “you got what you deserved.” The thought, however, would not depart but kept returning to him, and his imagination would dwell upon something dark floating on the surface of the water. “The fiends of hell get hold of112 thee,” he uttered aloud in a hoarse whisper, sitting up in bed.
As he sat up he heard a noise as of some one at his door. “Could any one be listening?” He rose softly and listened himself on the inner side. No, there was surely nothing. He cautiously opened the door and peered out into the shadowy passage. As he did so the door was drawn sharply from his hand and closed. For a moment he dared not move, but stood trembling, waiting, expectant. He heard a distant horse on the cobble stones, then absolute silence save the low wailing whistle of a gust of wind. It seemed to bring back Aline’s little white terrified face as she tried to cry out when he held her in his grip with his hand over her mouth. The cold sweat broke out on his forehead and then suddenly the tension relaxed,—“The wind, the wind; it was the wind that had blown the door out of his hand.”
He shivered and got back into bed. Again he heard horses’ hoofs; this time they came nearer and nearer, they were surely coming to the inn. Yes, they had stood still at the door. He leaped up and frantically slipped on his clothes, while they were knocking for admission. Should he try and escape down the stairs or through the window, down into the yard of the hostel? He went to the other window and peeped out. It was a man and a woman,—probably an eloping couple! He laughed a thin mirthless laugh and once more got back into bed.
This time he slept and dreamed that he was looking out of the window into the hostel yard. Gradually it filled with dark water nearly level with the sill. Then he saw something on the other side, floating on the surface. It seemed to be coming his way. Slowly it113 rose;—it was Aline, her arms hanging limply from the shoulders and the head falling over to one side, with the mouth open and a great gash above the forehead. It came nearer still. He tried to get away from the window, but something held him. He strove and struggled in vain. “Oh, that terrible mouth, that blood in the long wet hair.” Then the figure lifted a hand and pointed at him. In another moment she would touch him. “Maria! God!” he shrieked, but slowly it came closer and closer. He shut his eyes; there was a great shock and he woke. He was lying on the floor with his heart beating violently and a pain in the back of his head.
He did not dare to go back to bed this time; to sleep was worse than to be awake. He sat down on the bed and held his throbbing brow between his hands while his elbows rested on his knees; but gradually fatigue overcame him and he fell asleep again. This time he found himself standing among a crowd of other persons with lanthorns by the side of the moat at Holwick. A little figure was being drawn up from the water. He saw it carried in over the drawbridge, where the old arms of the Mowbrays looked down,—argent, a cross engrailed azure; but he dared not follow. He seemed to stand there waiting for days and days. “Would no one ever come out?” Then the funeral cortège appeared from under the same gateway. He followed with the crowd, no one seemed to see him, and there, in the ancient churchyard of Middleton, he saw the little coffin lowered into the ground.
11 I.e., the field of the shield silver or white, the cross blue with an irregular border.
When every one had gone he still stood by the grave, dazed and wondering. He was just about to leave, when114 a child’s figure in the crowd turned back. It was Audry. She came slowly up to him and looked from him to the grave and from the grave to him. Her face was filled with unutterable reproach. “You,” she said, and lifted her finger at him and was gone.
He tried to run after her, but it was like running in heavy clay; his feet were as lead and he seemed to slip back a pace for every step he took forward. Finally he abandoned the attempt and, putting his hands over his face, he wept bitterly.
He was still weeping when he woke. “Holy Mother,” he cried, “why did I do it?” The thought of the frail child bravely withstanding him in the courtyard of Holwick came back to him,—“little St. Aline,” as the villagers called her. Oh! how could he have done such a deed? “I am lost, damned, and nothing I may do can ever bring her back. Cain! Cain! unclean, branded and accurst!”
It was morning now, should he go back and give himself up? Give himself up and be hanged! Surely it were better to slay himself with his own hands than do that! But the love of life is strong. Though he were dead, she would not come to life again; the only thing that seemed to offer any interest or hope was that some day he might be able to serve little Mistress Audry, Aline’s playmate, Aline’s friend, all that was left to represent the sweet child.
So he rose and ate a few mouthfuls, by way of breakfast, and mounted his horse, intending to make his way to London. But the agony of his remorse would hardly allow him to sit his steed and, as he looked at the bright sunshine, he shuddered and cursed it in his heart.
WHILE Andrew was starting over the hills in the darkness, the family had gathered in the hall. Master Mowbray had seen that the drawbridge was raised and that everything was safe for the night. Audry soon wondered what had become of Aline and after a time made an excuse to get away and went up to their room and down to the secret chamber. “Is not Aline here?” she queried.
“No,” said Ian, “she has not been down for a long time.”
Ian came towards Audry as she spoke. “Why? cannot you find her?” he said.
“No, she is not in the hall and not in our room.”
“Perhaps old Elspeth knows.”
“I had forgotten her for the moment,” and Audry’s face brightened up. “I will run and find her.” This she did at once but Aline had not been seen.
At length Audry felt that she must tell the others. So she came back to the great hall and told Master Mowbray that Aline had disappeared.
“’Sdeath,” he exclaimed, “what has happened to her; call the men at once, run, Audry.”
“Oddsfish man,” said Mistress Mowbray, “one would think the child was an infant that could not take care116 of itself,—making such a fuss as that! And I do not see that it would be so very great a matter if she were lost. Why, you make as much a to-do about her as though she were your own daughter. The hussie is up to mischief and she will see that she does herself no harm.”
Master Mowbray did not wait for all this, but left his wife talking to the empty air. The first thing was to rouse all the servants and every room inside was speedily examined, but with no result. “She must have gone out before the gate was shut,” suggested Audry, “but that is a very unusual thing. She might have gone to speak with one of the servants and crossed the bridge just before it was closed. But even if she had walked a little way and not heard them close the gate, she would have rung the great bell. Surely she would not be too frightened.”
To be out after the drawbridge was raised was a very serious fault as every one in the Hall knew full well, and many a servant had rather run the risk of staying out all night than incur the wrath and penalties that would follow such an offence.
“I hope the child has not come back and walked into the moat,” said Master Mowbray. “It is a terribly dark night. Come this way,” he added in a husky voice. In his rough way he was fonder of her than he would have admitted even to himself, and her spell was increasing its hold upon him.
They went to the gate and the drawbridge was instantly lowered. They then crossed the bridge and divided into two parties, taking their lanthorns to the right and left.
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Audry accompanied her father to the left and they had not gone ten paces before they came upon Aline’s little form lying in a broken piece of the moat-wall, half in and half out of the water. It was easy to get down to the water in many places on the outer side although impossible on the inner side. Master Mowbray stepped down and picked up the slight figure and carried it into the hall.
She had apparently been dead for some time, and Audry broke into uncontrollable weeping; her whole frame shook violently and it almost seemed that she would choke herself. Every one stood aghast. Even Mistress Mowbray felt something of the atmosphere of grief; she was the only one sufficiently unmoved to speak at all, but she said, “Poor little lassie, that was a hard ending. But, Audry dear, you must try and control yourself, you will make yourself seriously ill.”
“I do not mind if I do,” the child sobbed in reply. “Oh, Aline, darling Aline, do not leave me, I cannot bear it,” and she flung herself on to the small still form on the old oak settle and they feared her heart would break.
By this time every one was weeping, even the men-servants and Mistress Mowbray herself.
But as Audry passionately pressed the cold wet features to her face, she suddenly cried out, “She is not dead. I am sure she is not dead, I am sure that she still breathes.”
There was a fire in the hall, as the summer was getting on and the evenings were chilly up in the moorland district. In less time than it takes to say, a bed had been made up by the fire and warmed with a warming118 pan, and old Elspeth had tenderly undressed the child and put her in the bed, while some one else had brought some warm milk. Elspeth was bending over her and lightly rubbing the damp hair, half crooning to herself, “My bairnie, my bonnie bairnie, wake up, my sweetest, wake up once more.” Suddenly Aline opened her eyes and looked round for a moment, and then closed them again. She gave no more sign that night and it was an anxious time; but hope was strong. Hardly any one went to bed but Mistress Mowbray. Even the servants for the most part wandered about, coming every now and then to ask if there was any news. The child was a favourite with nearly all of them, as much on account of her gentle thoughtful ways as on account of her extreme almost supernatural beauty. Then there was that strange mysterious power that seemed to hold practically every one with whom she came into contact. There were, of course, one or two who felt her very presence was a sort of standing reproach and who disliked her accordingly, but such was the extraordinary sweetness of her disposition that some, even in this class, found themselves coaxed to a certain extent out of their worse into their better selves against their will.
In the morning it was apparent that immediate danger was passed, which caused Mistress Mowbray to exclaim,—“Drat the bairn for frightening us all like that without any reason. How stupid of her to fall into the moat.”
As soon as Aline was able to talk she had to explain how it happened. They had gently moved her to another room and Audry and Master Mowbray were seated at the bedside. She had told them of what she had seen119 and how Andrew had thrown her into the water. “As I fell,” she went on, “I felt my head strike violently against something. I luckily did not become unconscious at once, but was able to scramble through the water to the bank. I remember trying to get into a sort of hole in the wall, and then I remember no more till this morning.”
“But can you swim?” said Master Mowbray in blank astonishment, as it was not considered a little girl’s accomplishment.
“A little bit,” said Aline, not too anxious to draw attention to her powers in this direction; as after the River Tees incident she felt it might be better if they did not know what she was capable of doing.
“I am afraid, sire, that the man is likely to be the same that took your silver cup and other things,” she said, “but I am glad that I have not had my wetting for nothing, and that you will be able to stop any more corn being taken.”
Master Mowbray stooped and kissed her. He did not often kiss the children, not even Audry, as his was not a demonstrative nature. “Poor sweet soul,” he said, “how can I repay you for what you have done?”
“Let us go into the library again,” said Aline at once.
“Of course, of course,” he said hastily; “however, we must do something better than that; but for the present I must see about those scoundrels, Andrew Woolridge and Thomas Carluke.”
When Thomas heard what had happened on his arrival in the morning he cursed the fates, saying to himself, “Why was Andrew such a fool as not to go and get a long rod and feel all around that moat-side. She120 could never have got out on the inner side. But who would have known that the skelpie could swim?” and he bit his lips in indignation. “I wonder if they will suspect me? No, Andrew is gone. I shall be safe; but curse her, curse her a thousand times.”
Andrew had not even dared to go to his own house but had slipped away over the hills at once; consequently, when they sent down there, nothing was known of him. News, however, soon leaked out of what had happened and soon the whole country-side was on his track, with the consequence that, before three days were spent, he was safely lodged in what was known as the lower tower-room, in the old pele-tower on the west side of the Hall.
Master Mowbray was determined to send him to York to stand his trial as soon as possible, but to his great surprise he met with opposition from a very unexpected quarter. He went and told Aline the next morning after the successful capture and added that his intention was to send Andrew to York on the following day but one, expecting that the news would give her satisfaction.
Aline did not seem particularly pleased; but Audry, who was there, said, “Oh, I am glad they have caught him; I hope he will soon be hanged.”
Aline looked up rather puzzled. “Isn’t that rather blood-thirsty?”
“Oh, no! Aline, dear Aline, if he had succeeded! Oh!” and Audry nearly wept at the bare thought.
“I don’t know. I am not sure that people should be hanged.”
“Of course they should be hanged,” said Master Richard.
Aline felt a certain spirit of opposition arising.121 “Certainly,” she thought, “hanging does not seem to be a particularly helpful road to repentance.” Her head ached and she could not think very clearly; but of a surety if once she let the man be hanged it would be too late to do anything.
The others watched her silently for a few moments and then to Master Mowbray’s amazement Aline begged with tears in her eyes that he would let Andrew off if he would confess all that he had taken and restore it as far as possible, and promise to make all the amends that lay in his power. Master Mowbray at first absolutely refused; but, at last, to humour the child, promised that he would reconsider the question on the following day if she were better.
Aline was stronger and brighter the next day and when Richard Mowbray came in to see her she renewed her request,—“You said, sire, yesterday,” she began, “that you would like to do something better for me than just let Audry and me use the library again, so I want, please, to make this my request,—that you will not punish Andrew and Thomas if they show that they are really sorry.”
“Of course, if you put it that way, child, I shall have to do what you ask, as far as is possible.” He sat for a few moments without speaking, and then added,—“I have examined into the matter and find that Thomas did not actually steal anything himself, nor did he get anything out of it; but he seems to be a poor cowardly sort of fellow whom Andrew used as a tool. I might let him stay on in the house if you greatly wish it, but I really cannot, even if we pardon Andrew, have him any longer at the Hall. I think that the man is too violent to be122 trusted. He does not really belong to this neighbourhood at all and it might be possible to send him back to Carlisle whence he came. That is about all that I can suggest. There is a cousin of mine near there who might keep an eye on him, and if he gives sign of trouble this could still be kept hanging over him. But do you really wish it? Do you understand, child, what you are doing?”
“Yes, I really would like it,” she said.
“Then I shall go and speak to the men,” said Mowbray, and departed.
After half an hour he came back again. “Would you mind seeing them?” he said. “I think it would be good for them. I have told them what you asked and at first they hardly seemed to believe it. Andrew scarcely said anything, though Thomas was profuse in his gratitude.”
“I will see them if you wish it, but it is not easy.”
He looked at the sad little figure and his heart smote him and yet somehow he felt that it was the right thing to do, so he went down again and brought up the men.
Aline was propped up on pillows; she looked very weak, but the wonderful pearly, almost translucent, complexion that distinguished her had for the moment recovered its usual brilliancy. Andrew was led in with his hands tied behind his back; he looked sullen and sheepish, whereas Aline had seldom looked more queenly in spite of her condition. Thomas was not bound and looked singularly at ease.
“You have both of you behaved most disgracefully,” Master Mowbray said in a judicial tone; “you have meanly taken advantage of the house that had provided123 you with your livelihood and one of you has committed a crime so vile that it is not for me to find words in which to express my abhorrence. If I were doing what my real judgment tells me I should do, you, Thomas, for your part, would spend a long time in York Gaol, and as for you,” he continued, turning to Andrew, “the world would soon be rid of you altogether. However, Mistress Aline has asked me to give you both another chance, as you know; but I wanted you first to see the result of your sin and to give you an opportunity of thanking her for what you do not deserve; so I have brought you here. Aline, child, tell them what you want them to do.”
It was a very difficult task for the small invalid, and Master Mowbray did not at all realise what he was demanding from the sensitive highly strung little maiden. But she nerved herself for the task and tried to forget herself and everything but the men before her.
“Oh, please, Andrew,” she said, “I only want to tell you that I am feeling much better. I shall be all right in a day or two, and Master Mowbray says that you are to go to Carlisle, where you used to live. My father once took me to Carlisle when I was a very little girl and it is a fine town, much bigger than Appleby. You should easily find work there and you will not forget, will you, to send Master Mowbray something every month to replace the things that have gone? Master Mowbray’s cousin will let us know how you are getting on, and please, sire,” she continued, turning to Richard Mowbray himself and then looking at Andrew’s bonds but not mentioning them, “I want to shake hands with Andrew and hope that he will be happy.”
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The Master of Holwick looked at her rather amazed and then untied the rope. “You will promise to repay what you have stolen,” he said.
“Yes,” mumbled Andrew sulkily.
“Now say how grateful you are to her and how sorry you are for what you have done.”
“Thank you, I’m sorry.”
Aline held out her beautiful little hand and smiled sweetly at him. Andrew stiffly responded and then let his arm fall to his side. This was all entirely beyond his comprehension; why she did not wish him hanged he utterly failed to grasp. What was the use of having one’s enemy in one’s hands if one did not crush him? “Certainly,” he thought, “there were some foolish people who were generally called good, who did not behave in that way, and who preached to one about one’s sins, but this child said nothing about his sins and was simply beyond calculation altogether.”
She turned to Thomas with the same frank smile to take his hand, “So you are going to stay with us, Thomas; I wonder whether you would be kind enough to help Mistress Audry to look after my falcon while I am ill.”
“Oh, yes, indeed, Mistress Aline,” he replied, “I shall never forget your kindness to me. May the Mother of God bless you for what you have done. We are all of us sinners and may God have mercy upon me.” He kneeled as he spoke and pressed her hand to his lips and added, “You may be sure that I shall always be ready to serve you to my dying day. It will be my lasting honour to carry out your least wish.”
Thomas congratulated himself on having escaped so125 easily, and as they were dismissed and were crossing the courtyard he said to Andrew,—“She is a soft one and no mistake.” Andrew did not reply; he had not recovered his senses. She must be a fool, he thought, and yet she made him look a pretty fool, too; he was not sure for the moment that he did not hate her more than ever. But, as he came to think it over in after years, the scene would rise before his eyes, and he would see that fascinating delicate face with pain written all over it, and hear the musical voice pleading,—“You will not forget, will you?”