By What Authority? Part 24

CHAPTER IV

A COUNTER-MARCH

Isabel was sitting out alone in the Italian garden at the Hall, one afternoon in the summer following the visit to Deptford. Hubert was down at Plymouth, a.s.sisting in the preparations for the expedition that Drake hoped to conduct against Spain. The two countries were technically at peace, but the object with which he was going out, with the moral and financial support of the Queen, was a corporate demonstration against Spain, of French, Portuguese, and English s.h.i.+ps under the main command of Don Antonio, the Portuguese pretender; it was proposed to occupy Terceira in the Azores; and Drake and Hawkins entertained the highest hopes of laying their hands on further plunder.

She was leaning back in her seat, with her hands behind her head, thinking over her relations with Hubert. When he had been at home at the end of the previous year, he had apparently taken it for granted that the marriage would be celebrated; he had given her the gold nugget, that she had showed Anthony, telling her he had brought it home for the wedding-ring; and she understood that he was to come for his final answer as soon as his work at Plymouth was over. But not a word of explanation had pa.s.sed between them on the religious difficulty. He had silenced her emphatically and kindly once when she had approached it; and she gathered from his manner that he suspected the direction in which her mind was turning and was generously unwilling for her to commit herself an inch further than she saw. Else whence came his a.s.surance? And, for herself, things were indeed becoming plain: she wondered why she had hesitated so long, why she was still hesitating; the cup was br.i.m.m.i.n.g above the edge; it needed but a faint touch of stimulus to precipitate all.

And so Isabel lay back and pondered, with a touch of happy impatience at the workings of her own soul; for she dared not act without the final touch of conviction. Mistress Margaret had taught her that the swiftest flight of the soul was when there was least movement, when the soul knew how to throw itself with that supreme effort of cessation into the Hands of G.o.d, that He might bear it along: when, after informing the intellect and seeking by prayer for G.o.d's bounty, the humble client of Heaven waited with uplifted eyes and ready heart until G.o.d should answer. And so she waited, knowing that the gift was at hand, yet not daring to s.n.a.t.c.h it. But, in the meanwhile, her imagination at least might act without restraint; so she sent it out, like a bird from the Ark, to bring her the earnest of peace. There, in the cloister-wing, somewhere, lay the chapel, where she and Hubert would kneel together;--somewhere beneath that grey roof. That was the terrace where she would walk one day as one who has a right there. Which of these windows would be hers? Not Lady Maxwell's, of course; she must keep that.... Ah! how good G.o.d was!

The tall door on to the terrace opened, and Mistress Margaret peered out with a letter in her hand. Isabel called to her; and the old nun came down the steps into the garden. Why did she walk so falteringly, the girl wondered, as if she could not see? What was it? What was it?

Isabel rose to her feet, startled, as the nun with bent head came up the path. "What is it, Mistress Margaret?"

The other tried to smile at her, but her lips were trembling too much; and the girl saw that her eyes were br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears. She put the letter into her hand.

Isabel lifted it in an agony of suspense; and saw her name, in Hubert's handwriting.

"What is it?" she said again, white to the lips.

The old lady as she turned away glanced at her; and Isabel saw that her face was all twitching with the effort to keep back her tears. The girl had never seen her like that before, even at Sir Nicholas' death. Was there anything, she wondered as she looked, worse than death? But she was too dazed by the sight to speak, and Mistress Margaret went slowly back to the house unquestioned.

Isabel turned the letter over once or twice; and then sat down and opened it. It was all in Hubert's sprawling handwriting, and was dated from Plymouth.

It gave her news first about the squadron; saying how Don Antonio had left London for Plymouth, and was expected daily; and then followed this paragraph:

"And now, dearest Isabel, I have such good news to give you. _I have turned Protestant_; and there is no reason why we should not be married as soon as I return. I know this will make you happy to think that our religions are no longer different. I have thought of this so long; but would not tell you before for fear of disappointing you. Sir Francis Drake's religion seems to me the best; it is the religion of all the 'sea-dogs' as they name us; and of the Queen's Grace, and it will be soon of all England; and more than all it is the religion of my dearest mistress and love. I do not, of course, know very much of it as yet; but good Mr. Collins here has shown me the superst.i.tions of Popery; and I hope now to be justified by faith without works as the gospel teaches. I fear that my mother and aunt will be much distressed by this news; I have written, too, to tell them of it. You must comfort them, dear love; and perhaps some day they, too, will see as we do." Then followed a few messages, and loving phrases, and the letter ended.

Isabel laid it down beside her on the low stone wall; and looked round her with eyes that saw nothing. There was the grey old house before her, and the terrace, and the cloister-wing to the left, and the hot suns.h.i.+ne lay on it all, and drew out scents and colours from the flower-beds, and joy from the insects that danced in the trembling air; and it all meant nothing to her; like a picture when the page is turned over it. Five minutes ago she was regarding her life and seeing how the Grace of G.o.d was slowly sorting out its elements from chaos to order--the road was unwinding itself before her eyes as she trod on it day by day--now a hand had swept all back into disorder, and the path was hidden by the ruins.

Then gradually one thought detached itself, and burned before her, vivid and startling; and in all its terrible reality slipped between her and the visible world on which she was staring. It was this: to embrace the Catholic Faith meant the renouncing of Hubert. As a Protestant she might conceivably have married a Catholic; as a Catholic it was inconceivable that she should marry an apostate.

Then she read the letter through again carefully and slowly; and was astonished at the unreality of Hubert's words about Romish superst.i.tion and gospel simplicity. She tried hard to silence her thoughts; but two reasons for Hubert's change of religion rose up and insisted on making themselves felt; it was that he might be more in unity with the buccaneers whom he admired; second, that there might be no obstacle to their marriage. And what then, she asked, was the quality of the heart he had given her?

Then, in a flash of intuition, she perceived that a struggle lay before her, compared with which all her previous spiritual conflicts were as child's play; and that there was no avoiding it. The vision pa.s.sed, and she rose and went indoors to find the desolate mother whose boy had lost the Faith.

A month or two of misery went by. For Lady Maxwell they pa.s.sed with recurring gusts of heart-broken sorrow and of agonies of prayer for her apostate son. Mistress Margaret was at the Hall all day, soothing, encouraging, even distracting her sister by all the means in her power.

The mother wrote one pa.s.sionate wail to her son, appealing to all that she thought he held dear, even yet to return to the Faith for which his father had suffered and in which he had died; but a short answer only returned, saying it was impossible to make his defence in a letter, and expressing pious hopes that she, too, one day would be as he was; the same courier brought a letter to Isabel, in which he expressed his wonder that she had not answered his former one.

And as for Isabel, she had to pa.s.s through this valley of darkness alone.

Anthony was in London; and even if he had been with her could not have helped her under these circ.u.mstances; her father was dead--she thanked G.o.d for that now--and Mistress Margaret seemed absorbed in her sister's grief. And so the girl fought with devils alone. The arguments for Catholicism burned pitilessly clear now; every line and feature in them stood out distinct and hard. Catholicism, it appeared to her, alone had the marks of the Bride, visible unity, visible Catholicity, visible Apostolicity, visible Sanct.i.ty;--there they were, the seals of the most High G.o.d. She flung herself back furiously into the Protestantism from which she had been emerging; there burned in the dark before her the marks of the Beast, visible disunion, visible nationalism, visible Erastianism, visible gulfs where holiness should be: that system in which now she could never find rest again glared at her in all its unconvincing incoherence, its lack of spirituality, its adulterous union with the civil power instead of the pure wedlock of the Spouse of Christ. She wondered once more how she dared to have hesitated so long; or dared to hesitate still.

On the theological side intellectual arguments of this kind started out, strong and irrefutable; her emotional drawings towards Catholicism for the present retired. Feelings might have been disregarded or discredited by a strong effort of the will; these apparently cold phenomena that presented themselves to her intellect, could not be thus dealt with. Yet, strangely enough, even now she would not throw herself resolutely into Catholicism: the fierce stimulus instead of precipitating the crisis, petrified it. More than once she started up from her knees in her own dark room, resolved to awaken the nun and tell her she would wait no longer, but would turn Catholic at once and have finished with the misery of suspense: and even as she moved to the door her will found itself against an impenetrable wall.

And then on the other side all her human nature cried out for Hubert--Hubert--Hubert. There he stood by her in fancy, day and night, that chivalrous, courteous lad, who had been loyal to her so long; had waited so patiently; had run to her with such dear impatience; who was so wholesome, so strong, so humble to her; so quick to understand her wants, so eager to fulfil them; so bound to her by a.s.sociations; so fit a mate for the very differences between them. And now these two claims were no longer compatible; in his very love for her he had ended that possibility. All those old dreams; the little scenes she had rehea.r.s.ed, of their first ma.s.s, their first communion together; their walks in the twilight; their rides over the hills; the new ties that were to draw the old ladies at the Hall and herself so close together--all this was changed; some of those dreams were now for ever impossible, others only possible on terms that she trembled even to think of. Perhaps it was worst of all to reflect that she was in some measure responsible for his change of religion; she fancied that it was through her slowness to respond to light, her delaying to confide in him, that he had been driven through impatience to take this step. And so week after week went by and she dared not answer his letter.

The old ladies, too, were sorely puzzled at her. It was impossible for them to know how far her religion was changing. She had kept up the same reserve towards them lately as towards Hubert, chiefly because she feared to disappoint them; and so after an attempt to tell each other a little of their mutual sympathy, the three women were silent on the subject of the lad who was so much to them all.

She began to show her state a little in her movements and appearance. She was languid, soon tired and dispirited; she would go for short, lonely walks, and fall asleep in her chair worn out when she came in. Her grey eyes looked longer and darker; her eyelids and the corners of her mouth began to droop a little.

Then in October he came home.

Isabel had been out a long afternoon walk by herself through the reddening woods. They had never, since the first awakening of the consciousness of beauty in her, meant so little to her as now. It appeared as if that keen unity of a life common to her and all living things had been broken or obscured; and that she walked in an isolation all the more terrible in that she was surrounded by the dumb presence of what she loved. Last year the quick chattering cry of the blackbird, the evening mists over the meadows, the stir of the fading life of the woods, the rustling scamper of the rabbit over the dead leaves, the solemn call of the homing rooks--all this, only last year, went to make up the sweet natural atmosphere in which her spirit moved and breathed at ease. Now she was excommunicate from that pleasant friends.h.i.+p, banned by nature and forgotten by the G.o.d who made it and was immanent within it. Her relations to the Saviour, who only such a short time ago had been the Person round whom all the joys of life had centred, from whom they radiated, and to whom she referred them all--these relations had begun to be obscured by her love for Hubert, and now had vanished altogether. She had regarded her earthly and her heavenly lover as two persons, each of whom had certain claims upon her heart, and each of whom she had hoped to satisfy in different ways; instead of identifying the two, and serving each not apart from, but in the other. And it now seemed to her that she was making experience of a Divine jealousy that would suffer her to be satisfied neither with G.o.d nor man. Her soul was exhausted by internal conflict, by the swift alternations of attraction and repulsion between the poles of her supernatural and natural life; so that when it turned wearily from self to what lay outside, it was not even capable, as before, of making that supreme effort of cessation of effort which was necessary to its peace. It seemed to her that she was self-poised in emptiness, and could neither touch heaven or earth--crucified so high that she could not rest on earth, so low that she could not reach to heaven.

She came in weary and dispirited as the candles were being lighted in her sitting-room upstairs; but she saw the gleam of them from the garden with no sense of a welcoming brightness. She pa.s.sed from the garden into the door of the hall which was still dark, as the fire had nearly burned itself out. As she entered the door opposite opened, and once more she saw the silhouette of a man's figure against the lighted pa.s.sage beyond; and again she stopped frightened, and whispered "Anthony."

There was a momentary pause as the door closed and all was dark again; and then she heard Hubert's voice say her name; and felt herself wrapped once more in his arms. For a moment she clung to him with furious longing. Ah! this is a tangible thing, she felt, this clasp; the faint cleanly smell of his rough frieze dress refreshed her like wine, and she kissed his sleeve pa.s.sionately. And the wide gulf between them yawned again; and her spirit sickened at the sight of it.

"Oh! Hubert, Hubert!" she said.

She felt herself half carried to a high chair beside the fire-place and set down there; then he re-arranged the logs on the hearth, so that the flames began to leap again, showing his strong hands and keen clear-cut face; then he turned on his knees, seized her two hands in his own, and lifted them to his lips; then laid them down again on her knee, still holding them; and so remained.

"Oh! Isabel," he said, "why did you not write?"

She was silent as one who stares fascinated down a precipice.

"It is all over," he went on in a moment, "with the expedition. The Queen's Grace has finally refused us leave to go--and I have come back to you, Isabel."

How strong and pleasant he looked in this leaping fire-light! how real!

and she was hesitating between this warm human reality and the chilly possibilities of an invisible truth. Her hands tightened instinctively within his, and then relaxed.

"I have been so wretched," she said piteously.

"Ah! my dear," and he threw an arm round her neck and drew her face down to his, "but that is over now." She sat back again; and then an access of purpose poured into her and braced her will to an effort.

"No, no," she began, "I must tell you. I was afraid to write. Hubert, I must wait a little longer. I--I do not know what I believe."

He looked at her, puzzled.

"What do you mean, dearest?'

"I have been so much puzzled lately--thinking so much--and--and--I am sorry you have become a Protestant. It makes all so hard."

"My dear, this is--I do not understand."

"I have been thinking," went on Isabel bravely, "whether perhaps the Catholic Church is not right after all."

Hubert loosed her hands and stood up. She crouched into the shadow of the interior of the high chair, and looked up at him, terrified. His cheek twitched a little.

"Isabel, this is foolishness. I know what the Catholic faith is. It is not true; I have been through it all."

He was speaking nervously and abruptly. She said nothing. Then he suddenly dropped on his knees himself.

"My dearest, I understand. You were doing this for me. I quite understand. It is what I too----" and then he stopped.

"I know, I know," she cried piteously. "It is just what I have feared so terribly--that--that our love has been blinding us both. And yet, what are we to do, what are we to do? Oh! G.o.d--Hubert, help me."

Then he began to speak in a low emphatic voice, holding her hands, delicately stroking one of them now and again, and playing with her fingers. She watched his curly head in the firelight as he talked, and his keen face as he looked up.