Clare Avery Part 20

"Ah, Senora, our faith differs from yours much less than you think.

What is a confessor, but a priest--a minister? The Senor Tremayne is a confessor, when one of his people shall wish his advice. Where lieth the difference?"

Blanche was too ignorant to know where it lay.

"I accounted there to be mighty difference," she said, hesitatingly.

"_Valgame los santos_! [The saints defend me!]--but a shade or two of colour. Hold we not the same creeds as you? Your Book of Common Prayer--what is it but the translation of ours? We wors.h.i.+p the same G.o.d; we honour the same persons, as you. Where, then, is the difference? Our priests wed not; yours may. We receive the Holy Eucharist in one kind; you, in both. We are absolved in private, and make confession thus; you, in public. Be these such mighty differences?"

If Don Juan had thrown a little less dust in her eyes, perhaps Blanche might have had sense enough to ask him where the Church of Rome had found her authority for her half of these differences, since it certainly was not in Holy Scripture: and also, whether that communion held such men as Cranmer, Latimer, Calvin, and Luther, in very high esteem? But the dust was much too thick to allow any stronger reply from Blanche than a feeble inquiry whether these really were all the points of difference.

"What other matter offendeth your Grace? Doubtless I can expound the same."

"Why, I have heard," said Blanche faintly, selecting one of the smaller charges first, "that the Papists do hold Mary, the blessed Virgin, to have been without sin."

"Some Catholics have that fantasy," replied Don Juan lightly. "It is only a few. The Church binds it not on the conscience of any. You take it--you leave it--as you will."

"Likewise you hold obedience due to the Bishop of Rome, instead of only unto your own Prince, as with us," objected Blanche, growing a shade bolder.

"That, again, is but in matters ecclesiastical. In secular matters, I do a.s.sure your Grace, the Pope interfereth not."

Blanche, who had no answers to these subtle explainings away of the facts, felt as if all her outworks were being taken, one by one.

"Yet," she said, bringing her artillery to bear on a new point, "you have images in your churches, Don John, and do wors.h.i.+p unto them?"

The word wors.h.i.+p has changed its meaning since the days of Queen Elizabeth. To do wors.h.i.+p, and to do honour, were then interchangeable terms.

Don Juan smiled. "Have you no pictures in your books, Dona Blanca?

These images are but as pictures for the teaching of the vulgar, that cannot read. How else should we learn them? If some of the ignorant make blunder, and bestow to these images better honour than the Church did mean them, the mistake is theirs. No man really doth wors.h.i.+p unto these, only the vulgar."

"But do not you pray unto the saints?"

"We entreat the saints to pray for us; that is all."

"Then, in the Lord's Supper--the ma.s.s, you call it,"--said Blanche, bringing up at last her strongest battering-ram, "you do hold, as I have been taught, Don John, that the bread and wine be changed into the very self body and blood of our Saviour Christ, that it is no more bread and wine at all. Now how can you believe a matter so plainly confuted by your very senses?"

"Ah, if I had but your learning and wisdom, Senora!" sighed Don Juan, apparently from the bottom of his heart.

Blanche felt flattered; but she was not thrown off the scent, as her admirer intended her to be. She still looked up for the answer; and Don Juan saw that he must give it.

"Sweetest lady! I am no doctor of the schools, nor have I studied for the priesthood, that I should be able to expound all matters unto one of your Grace's marvellous judgment and learning. Yet, not to leave so fair a questioner without answer--suffer that I ask, your gracious leave accorded--did not our Lord say thus unto the holy Apostles,--'_Hoc est corpus mens_,' to wit, 'This is My Body?'"

Blanche a.s.sented.

"In what manner, then, was it thus?"

"Only as a memorial or representation thereof, we do hold, Don John."

"Good: as the child doth present [represent] the father, being of the like substance, no less than appearance,--as saith the blessed Saint Augustine, and also the blessed Jeronymo, and others of the holy Fathers of the Church, right from the time of our Lord and His Apostles."

Don Juan had never read a line of the works of Jerome or Augustine.

Fortunately for him, neither had Blanche,--a chance on which he safely calculated. Blanche was completely puzzled. She sat looking out of the window, and thinking with little power, and to small purpose. She had not an idea when Augustine lived, nor whether he read the service in his own tongue in a surplice, or celebrated the Latin ma.s.s in full pontificals. And if it were true that all the Fathers, down from the Apostles, had held the Roman view--for poor ignorant Blanche had not the least idea whether it were true or false--it was a very awkward thing.

Don Juan stood and watched her face for an instant. His diplomatic instinct told him that the subject had better be dropped. All that was needed to effect this end was a few well-turned compliments, which his ingenuity readily suggested. In five minutes more the theological discussion was forgotten, at least by Blanche, as Don Juan was a.s.suring her that in all Andalusia there were not eyes comparable to hers.

Mr Tremayne and Arthur came in to supper that evening. The former quietly watched the state of affairs without appearing to notice anything. He saw that Don Juan, who sat by Lucrece, paid her the most courteous attention; that Lucrece received it with a thinly-veiled air of triumph; that Blanche's eyes constantly followed, the young Spaniard: and he came to the conclusion that the affair was more complicated than he had originally supposed.

He waited, however, till Arthur and Lysken were both away, until he said anything at home. When those young persons were safely despatched to bed, Mr and Mrs Tremayne and Mrs Rose drew together before the fire, and discussed the state of affairs at Enville Court.

"Now, what thinkest, Robin?" inquired Mrs Rose. "Is Blanche, _la pauvrette_! as fully taken with Don Juan as Barbara did suppose?"

"I am afeared, fully."

"And Don Juan?"

"If I mistake not, is likewise taken with Blanche: but I doubt somewhat if he be therein as wholehearted as she."

"And what say the elders?" asked Mrs Tremayne.

"Look on with _eyes_ which see nought. But, nathless, there be one pair of eyes that see; and Blanche's path is not like to run o'er smooth."

"What, Mistress Rachel?"

"Nay, she is blind as the rest. I mean Lucrece."

"Lucrece! Thinkest she will ope the eyes of the other?"

"I think she casteth about to turn Don Juan's her way."

"Alack, poor Blanche!" said Mrs Tremayne. "Howso the matter shall go, mefeareth she shall not 'scape suffering."

"She is no match for Lucrece," observed Mrs Rose.

"Truth: but I am in no wise a.s.sured Don Juan is not," answered Mr Tremayne with a slightly amused look. "As for Blanche, she is like to suffer; and I had well-nigh added, she demeriteth the same: but it will do her good, Thekla. At the least, if the Lord bless it unto her--be a.s.sured I meant not to leave out that."

"The furnace purifieth the gold," said Mrs Tremayne sadly: "yet the heat is none the less fierce for that, Robin."

"Dear heart, whether wouldst thou miss the suffering rather, and the purifying, or take both together?"

"It is soon over, Thekla," said her mother, quietly.

During the fierce heat of the Marian persecution, those words had once been said to Marguerite Rose. She had failed to realise them then. The lesson was learned now--thirty-five years later.

"Soon over, to look back, dear Mother," replied Mrs Tremayne. "Yet it never seems short to them that be in the furnace."

Mrs Rose turned rather suddenly to her son-in-law.

"Robin, tell me, if thou couldst have seen thy life laid out before thee on a map, and it had been put to thy choice to bear the Little Ease, or to leave go,--tell me what thou hadst chosen?"

For Mr Tremayne had spent several months in that horrible funnel-shaped prison, aptly termed Little Ease, and had but just escaped from it with life. He paused a moment, and his face grew very thoughtful.