Chapter Twenty.
Unstable as water.
“And I hope, my dear son,” said the Rev. Mr Bastian, with a face and voice as mellifluous as a honeycomb, “that all the members of your household are faithful, and well affected towards the Church our mother?”
The Rev. Mr Bastian chose his words well. If he had said, “as faithful as yourself,” Mr Roberts might have assented, with an interior conviction that his own faithfulness was not without its limits. He left no such loophole of escape. Mr Roberts could only reply that he entertained a similar hope. But whatever his hopes might be, his expectations on that score were not extensive. Mr Roberts had the nature of the ostrich, and imagined that if he shut his eyes to the thing he wished to avoid seeing, he thereby annihilated its existence. Deep down in his heart he held considerable doubts as concerned more than one member of his family; but the doubts were uncomfortable: so he put them to bed, drew the curtains, and told them to be good doubts and go to sleep. When children are treated in this manner, mothers and nurses know that sometimes they go to sleep. But sometimes they don’t. And doubts are very much like children in that respect. Occasionally they consent to be smothered up and shelved aside; at other times they break out and become provokingly noisy. A good deal depends on the vitality of both the doubts and the children.
Mr Roberts’s doubts and fears—for they went together—that all his household were not in a conformable state of mind, had hitherto gone to sleep at his bidding; but lately they had been more difficult to manage. He was uneasy about his sister, Mrs Collenwood; and with no diminution of his affection for her, was beginning to realise that his mind would be relieved when she ended her visit and went home. He feared her influence over Pandora. For Gertrude he had no fears. He knew, and so did the priest, that Gertrude was not the sort of girl to indulge in abstract speculations, religious or otherwise. So long as her new gown was not made in last year’s fashion, and her mantua-maker did not put her off with Venice ribbon when she wanted Tours, it mattered nothing at all to Gertrude whether she attended mass or went to the nearest conventicle. Nor had the fears spread yet towards Mistress Grena, who still appeared at mass on Sunday and holy-days, though with many inward misgivings which she never spoke.
Perhaps the priest had sharper eyes than the easy-tempered master of Primrose Croft. But his tongue had lost nothing of its softness when he next inquired—
“And how long, my son, does your sister, Mistress Collenwood, abide with you?”
“Not much longer now, Father,” replied the unhappy Mr Roberts, with a private resolution that his answer should be true if he could make it so.
Mr Bastian left that unpleasant topic, and proceeded to carry his queries into the servants’ department, Mr Roberts growing more relieved as he proceeded. He had never observed any want of conformity among his servants, he assured the priest; so far as he knew, all were loyal to the Catholic Church. By that term both gentlemen meant, not the universal body of Christian believers (the real signification of the word), but that minority which blindly obeys the Pope, and being a minority, is of course not Catholic nor universal. When Mr Roberts’s apprehensions had thus been entirely lulled to rest, the wily priest suddenly returned to the charge.
“I need not, I am fully ensured,” he said in his suave manner, “ask any questions touching your daughters.”
“Of that, Father,” answered Mr Roberts quickly, “you must be a better judge than I. But I do most unfeignedly trust that neither of my maids hath given you any trouble by neglect of her religious duties? Gertrude, indeed, is so—”
“Mistress Gertrude hath not given me trouble,” replied the priest. “Her worst failing is one common to maidens—a certain lack of soberness. But I cannot conceal from you, my son, that I am under some uneasiness of mind as touching her sister.”
Mr Bastian’s uneasiness was nothing to that of the man he was engaged in tormenting. The terrified mouse does not struggle more eagerly to escape the claws of the cat, than the suffering father of Pandora to avoid implicating her in the eyes of his insinuating confessor.
“Forsooth, Father, you do indeed distress me,” said he. “If Pandora have heard any foolish talk on matters of religion, I would gladly break her from communication with any such of her acquaintance as can have been thus ill-beseen. Truly, I know not of any, and methought my sister Grena kept the maids full diligently, that they should not fall into unseemly ways. I will speak, under your good leave, with both of them, and will warn Pandora that she company not with such as seem like to have any power over her for evil.”
“Well said, my son!” responded the priest, with a slight twinkle in his eye. “Therein shall you do well; and in especial if you report to me the names of any that you shall suspect to have ill-affected the maiden. And now, methinks, I must be on my way home.”
Mr Roberts devoutly thanked all the saints when he heard it. The priest took up his hat, brushed a stray thread from its edge, and said, as he laid his hand upon his silver-headed stick—said it as though the idea had just occurred to him—
“You spake of Mistress Holland. She, of course, is true to holy Church beyond all doubts?”
Mr Roberts went back to his previous condition of a frightened mouse.
“In good sooth, Father, I make no question thereof, nor never so did. She conformeth in all respects, no doth she?”
The cat smiled to itself at the poor mouse’s writhings under its playful pats.
“She conformeth—ay: but I scarce need warn you, my son, that there be many who conform outwardly, where the heart is not accordant with the actions. I trust, in very deed, that it were an unjust matter so to speak of Mistress Holland.”
Saying which, the cat withdrew its paw, and suffered the mouse to escape to its hole until another little excitement should be agreeable to it. In other words, the priest said good-bye, and left Mr Roberts in a state of mingled relief for the moment and apprehension for the future. For a few minutes that unhappy gentleman sat lost in meditation. Then rising with a muttered exclamation, wherein “meddlesome praters” were the only words distinguishable, he went to the foot of the stairs, and called up them, “Pandora!”
“There, now! You’ll hear of something!” said Gertrude to her sister, as she stood trying on a new apron before the glass. “You’d best go down. When Father’s charitably-minded he says either ‘Pan’ or ‘Dorrie.’ ‘Pandora’ signifies he’s in a taking.”
“I have done nought to vex him that I know of,” replied Pandora, rising from her knees before a drawer wherein she was putting some lace tidily away.
“Well, get not me in hot water,” responded Gertrude. “Look you, Pan, were this lace not better to run athwart toward the left hand?”
“I cannot wait to look, True; I must see what Father would have.”
As Pandora hastened downstairs, her aunt, Mrs Collenwood, came out of her room and joined her.
“I hear my brother calling you,” she said. “I would fain have a word with him, so I will go withal.”
The ladies found Mr Roberts wandering to and fro in the dining-room, with the aspect of a very dissatisfied man. He turned at once to his daughter.
“Pandora, when were you at confession?”
Pandora’s heart beat fast. “Not this week, Father.”
“Nor this month, maybe?”
“I am somewhat unsure, Father.”
“Went you to mass on Saint Chad’s Day?”
“Yes, Father.”
“And this Saint Perpetua?”
“No, Father; I had an aching of mine head, you mind.”
“Thomas,” interjected Mrs Collenwood, before the examination could proceed further, “give me leave, pray you, to speak a word, which I desire to say quickly, and you can resume your questioning of Pandora at after. I think to return home Thursday shall be a se’nnight; and, your leave granted, I would fain carry Pan with me. Methinks this air is not entirely wholesome for her at this time; and unless I err greatly, it should maybe save her some troublement if she tarried with me a season. I pray you, consider of the same, and let me know your mind thereon as early as may stand with your conveniency: and reckon me not tedious if I urge you yet again not to debar the same without right good reason. I fear somewhat for the child, without she can change the air, and that right soon.”
Pandora listened in astonishment. She was quite unconscious of bodily ailment, either present or likely to come. What could Aunt Frances mean? But Mr Roberts saw, what Pandora did not, a very significant look in his sister’s eyes, which said, more plainly than her words, that danger of some kind lay in wait for her niece if she remained in Kent, and was to be expected soon. He fidgeted up and down the room for a moment, played nervously with an alms-dish on the side-board, took up Cicero’s Orations and laid it down again, and at last said, in a tone which indicated relief from vexation—
“Well, well! Be it so, if you will. Make thee ready, then, child, to go with thine aunt. Doth Grena know your desire, Frank?”
“Grena and I have taken counsel,” replied Mrs Collenwood, “and this is her avisement no less than mine.”
“Settle it so, then. I thank you, Frank, for your care for the maid. When shall she return?”
“It were better to leave that for time to come. But, Thomas, I go about to ask a favour of you more.”
“Go to! what is it?”
“That you will not name to any man Pandora’s journey with me. Not to any man,” repeated Mrs Collenwood, with a stress on the last two words.
Mr Roberts looked at her. Her eyes conveyed serious warning. He knew as well as if she had shouted the words in his ears that the real translation of her request was, “Do not tell the priest.” But it was not safe to say it. Wherever there are Romish priests, there must be silent looks and tacit hints and unspoken understandings.
“Very good, Frances,” he said: “I will give no man to wit thereof.”
“I thank you right heartily, Tom. Should Dorrie abide here for your further satisfying, or may she go with me?”
“Go with you, go with you,” answered Mr Roberts hastily, waving Pandora away. “No need any further—time presseth, and I have business to see to.”
Mrs Collenwood smiled silently as she motioned to Pandora to pass out. Mr Roberts could scarcely have confessed more plainly that the priest had set him to a catechising of which he was but too thankful to be rid. “Poor Tom!” she said to herself.