Clare Avery Part 11

"Thou!--presented in the Court!" cried Blanche.

For of all the five, girls, Lysken was much the most unlikely ever to attain that eminence.

"Even so," she said, unmoved.

"Hast thou had promise thereof?"

"I have had promise thereof," repeated Lysken, in a tone which was lost upon Blanche, but Clare thought she began to understand her.

"Who hath promised thee?" asked Blanche, intensely interested.

"The King!" replied Lysken, with deep feeling. "And I shall be the King's daughter!"

"Lysken Barnevelt!" cried Blanche, dropping many of her flowers in her excitement, "art thou gone clean wood [mad], or what meanest thou?"

Lysken looked up with a smile full of meaning.

"'Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy,--to the only wise G.o.d our Saviour, be glory and majesty.'--Do but think,-- faultless! and, before His glory!"

Lysken's eyes were alight in a manner very rare with her. She was less shy with her friends at Enville Court than with most people.

"So that is what thou wert thinking on!" said Blanche, in a most deprecatory manner.

Lysken did not reply; but Clare whispered to her, "I would we might all be presented there, Lysken."

While the young ladies were thus engaged in debate, and Rachel was listening to the complaints of old Lot's wife from the village, and gravely considering whether the said Lot's rheumatism would be the better for a basin of viper broth,--Sir Thomas Enville, who was strolling in the garden, perceived two riders coming up to the house.

They were evidently a gentleman and his attendant serving-man, and as soon as they approached near enough for recognition, Sir Thomas hurried quickly to meet them. The Lord Strange, heir of Lathom and Knowsley, must not be kept waiting.

Only about thirty years had pa.s.sed over the head of Ferdinand Stanley, Lord Strange, yet his handsome features wore an expression of the deepest melancholy. People who were given to signs and auguries said that it presaged an early and violent death. And when, eight years later, after only one year's tenancy of the earldom of Derby, he died of a rapid, terrible, and mysterious disease, strange to all the physicians who saw him, the augurs, though a little disappointed that he was not beheaded, found their consolation in the conviction that he had been undoubtedly bewitched. His father, Earl Henry, seems to have been a cool, crafty time-server, who had helped to do the Duke of Somerset to death, more than thirty years before, and one of whose few good actions was his intercession with Bishop Bonner in favour of his kinsman, the martyr Roger Holland. His mother was the great heiress Margaret Clifford, who had inherited, before she was fifteen years of age, one-third of the estates of Duke Charles of Suffolk, the wealthiest man in England.

"'Save you, my good Lord!" was Sir Thomas's greeting. "You be right heartily welcome unto my poor house."

"I have seen poorer," replied Lord Strange with a smile.

"Pray your Lords.h.i.+p, go within."

After a few more amenities, in the rather ponderous style of the sixteenth century, Sir Thomas ceremoniously conducted his guest to Lady Enville's boudoir. She sat, resplendent in blue satin slashed with yellow, turning over some ribbons which Barbara Polwhele was displaying for her inspection. The ribbons were at once dismissed when the n.o.ble visitor appeared, and Barbara was desired to "do the thing she wot of in the little chamber."

The little chamber was a large, light closet, opening out of the boudoir, with a window looking on the garden; and the doorway between the rooms was filled by a green curtain. Barbara's work was to make up into shoulder-knots certain lengths of ribbon already put aside for that purpose. While the speakers, therefore, were to her invisible, their conversation was as audible as if she had been in the boudoir.

"And what news abroad, my good Lord?" asked Sir Thomas, when the usual formal civilities were over.

"Very ill news," said Lord Strange, sadly.

"Pray your Lords.h.i.+p, what so? We hear none here, lying so far from the Queen's highway."

"What heard you the last?"

"Well, methinks it were some strange matter touching the Scottish Queen, as though she should be set to trial on charge of some matter of knowledge of Babington's treason."

Sir Thomas's latest news, therefore, was about seven months old. There were no daily papers and Reuter's telegrams in his day.

"Good Sir Thomas, you have much to hear," replied his guest. "For the Scottish Queen, she is dead and buried,--beheaden at Fotheringay Castle, in Yorks.h.i.+re, these three months gone."

"Gramercy!"

"'Tis very true, I do ensure you. And would G.o.d that were the worst news I could tell you!"

"Pray your Lords.h.i.+p, speak quickly."

"There be afloat strange things of private import:--to wit, of my kinsman the Earl of Arundel, who, as 'tis rumoured, shall this next month be tried by the Star Chamber, and, as is thought, if he 'scape with life, shall be heavily charged in goods [Note 1]: or the Black a.s.size at Exeter this last year, whereby, through certain Portugals that were prisoners on trial, the ill smells did so infect the Court, [Note 2] that many died thereof--of the common people very many, and divers men of wors.h.i.+p,--among other Sir John Chichester of Raleigh, that you and I were wont to know, and Sir Arthur Ba.s.set of Umberleigh--"

Barbara Polwhele heard no more for a while. The name that had been last mentioned meant, to Lord Strange and Sir Thomas, the head of a county family of Devons.h.i.+re, a gentleman of first-cla.s.s blood. But to her it meant not only the great-grandson of Edward the Fourth, and the heir of the ruined House of Lisle,--but the bright-faced boy who, twenty-seven years before, used to flash in and out of John Avery's house in the Minories,--bringing "Aunt Philippa's loving commendations," or news that "Aunt Bridget looketh this next week to be in the town, and will be rare fain to see Mistress Avery:"--the boy who had first seen the light at Calais, on the very threshold of the family woe--and who, to the Averys, and to Barbara, as their retainer, was the breathing representative of all the dead Plantagenets. As to the Tudors,--the Queen's Grace, of course, was all that was right and proper, a brave lady and true Protestant; and long might G.o.d send her to rule over England!--but the Tudors, apart from Elizabeth personally, were--Hus.h.!.+ in 1587 it was perilous to say all one thought. So for some minutes Lord Strange's further news was unheard in the little chamber. A pathetic vision filled it, of a night in which there would be dole at Umberleigh, when the coffin of Sir Arthur Ba.s.set was borne to the sepulchre of his fathers in Atherington Church. [Note 3.] He was not yet forty-six.

"G.o.d save and comfort Mistress Philippa!"

For, eldest-born and last-surviving of her generation, in a green old age, Philippa Ba.s.set was living still. Time had swept away all the gallant brothers and fair sisters who had once been her companions at Umberleigh: the last to die, seven years before, being the eloquent orator, George. Yet Philippa lived on,--an old maiden lady, with heart as warm, and it must be confessed, with tongue as sharp, as in the days of her girlhood. Time had mellowed her slightly, but had changed nothing in her but one--for many years had pa.s.sed now since Philippa was heard to sneer at Protestantism. She never confessed to any alteration in her views; perhaps she was hardly conscious of it, so gradually had it grown upon her. Only those perceived it who saw her seldom: and the signs were very minute. A pa.s.sing admission that "may-be folk need not all be Catholics to get safe up yonder"--meaning, of course, to Heaven; an absence of the set lips and knitted brows which had formerly attended the reading of the English Scriptures in church; a courteous reception of the Protestant Rector; a capability of praying morning and evening without crucifix or rosary; a quiet dropping of crossings and holy water, oaths by our Lady's merits and Saint Peter's hosen: a general calm acquiescence in the new order of things. But how much did it mean?

Only that her eyes were becoming accustomed to the light?--or that age had weakened her prejudices?--or that G.o.d had touched her heart?

Some such thoughts were pa.s.sing through Barbara's mind, when Lord Strange's voice reached her understanding again.

"I ensure you 'tis said in the Court that his grief for the beheading of the Scots Queen is but a blind, [Note 4] and that these two years gone and more hath King Philip been making ready his galleons for to invade the Queen's Majesty's dominions. And now they say that we may look for his setting forth this next year. Sir Francis Drake is gone by Her Highness' command to the Spanish main, there to keep watch and bring word; and he saith he will singe the Don's whiskers ere he turn again.

Yet he may come, for all belike."

The singeing of the Don's whiskers was effected soon after, by the burning of a hundred s.h.i.+ps of war in the harbour of Cadiz.

"Why, not a man in England but would turn out to defend the Queen and country!" exclaimed Sir Thomas.

"Here is one that so will, Sir, by your leave," said another voice.

We may peep behind the green curtain, though Barbara did not. That elegant young man with such finished manners--surely he can never be our old and irrepressible friend Jack? Ay, Jack and no other; more courtly, but as irrepressible as ever.

"We'll be ready for him!" said Sir Thomas grimly.

"Amen!" was Jack's contribution, precisely in the treble tones of the parish clerk. The imitation was so perfect that even the grave Lord Strange could not suppress a smile.

"Shall I get thee a company, Jack Enville?"

"Pray do so, my good Lord. I thank your Lords.h.i.+p heartily."

"Arthur Tremayne is set on going, if it come to hot water--as seemeth like enough."

"Arthur Tremayne is a milksop, my Lord! I marvel what he means to do.

His brains are but addled eggs--all stuffed with Latin and Greek."

Jack, of course, like the average country gentleman of his time, was a profound ignoramus. What knowledge had been drilled into him in boyhood, he had since taken pains to forget. He was familiar with the punctilio of duelling, the code of regulations for fencing, the rules of athletic sports, and the intricacies of the gaming-table; but anything which he dubbed contemptuously "book-learning," he considered as far beneath him as it really was above.

"He will be as good for the Spaniards to shoot at as any other,"

jocularly observed Sir Thomas.