Chapter Twenty Eight.
Behind the arras.
“You had best make up your mind, Grena, whilst you yet may. This may be the last chance to get away hence that you shall have afore—” Mr Roberts hesitated; but his meaning was clear enough. “It doth seem me, now we have this opportunity through Master Laxton’s journey, it were well-nigh a sin to miss it. He is a sober, worthy man, and kindly belike; he should take good care of you; and going so nigh to Shardeford, he could drop you well-nigh at your mother’s gates. Now I pray you, Grena, be ruled by me, and settle it that you shall go without delay. He cannot wait beyond to-morrow to set forth.”
“I grant it all, Tom, and I thank you truly for your brotherly care. But it alway comes to the same end, whensoever I meditate thereon: I cannot leave you and Gertrude.”
“But wherefore no, Grena? Surely we should miss your good company, right truly: but to know that you were safe were compensation enough for that. True should be old enough to keep the house—there be many housewives younger—or if no; surely the old servants can go on as they are used, without your oversight. Margery and Osmund, at least—”
“They lack not my oversight, and assuredly not Gertrude’s. But you would miss me, Tom: and I could not be happy touching True.”
“Wherefore? Why, Grena, you said yourself they should lay no hand on her.”
“Nor will they. But Gertrude is one that lacks a woman about her that loveth her, and will yet be firm with her. I cannot leave the child—Paulina’s child—to go maybe to an ill end, for the lack of my care and love. She sees not the snares about her heedless feet, and would most likely be tangled in them ere you saw them. Maids lack mothers more than even fathers; and True hath none save me.”
“Granted. But for all that, Grena, I would not sacrifice you.”
“Tom, if the Lord would have me here, be sure He shall not shut me up in Canterbury Castle. And if He lacks me there, I am ready to go. He will see to you and True in that case.”
“But if He lack you at Shardeford, Grena? How if this journey of Mr Laxton be His provision for you, so being?”
There was silence for a moment.
“Ay,” said Grena Holland then, “if you and Gertrude go with me. If not, I shall know it is not the Lord’s bidding.”
“I! I never dreamed thereof.”
“Suppose, then, you dream thereof now.”
“Were it not running away from duty?”
“Methinks not. ‘When they persecute you in one city, flee ye into another,’ said our Lord. I see no duty that you have to leave. Were you a Justice of Peace, like your brother, it might be so: but what such have you? But one thing do I see—and you must count the cost, Tom. It may be your estate shall be sequestered, and all your goods taken to the Queen’s use. ’Tis perchance a choice betwixt life and liberty on the one hand, and land and movables on the other.”
Mr Roberts walked up and down the room, lost in deep thought. It was a hard choice to make: yet “all that a man hath will he give for his life.”
“Oh for the days of King Edward the First,” he sighed. “Verily, we valued not our blessings whilst we had them.”
Grena’s look was sympathising; but she left him to think out the question.
“If I lose Primrose Croft,” he said meditatively, “the maids will have nought.”
“They will have Shardeford when my mother dieth.”
“You,” he corrected. “You were the elder sister, Grena.”
“What is mine is theirs and yours,” she said quietly.
“You may wed, Grena.”
She gave a little amused laugh. “Methinks, Tom, you may leave that danger out of the question. Shardeford Hall will some day be Gertrude’s and Pandora’s.”
“We had alway thought of it as Pandora’s, if it came to the maids, and that Gertrude should have Primrose Croft. But if that go—and ’tis not unlike; in especial if we leave Kent— Grena, I know not what to do for the best.”
“Were it not best to ask the Lord, Tom?”
“But how shall I read the answer? Here be no Urim and Thummim to work by.”
“I cannot say how. But of one thing am I sure; the Lord never disappointeth nor confoundeth the soul that trusts in Him.”
“Well, Grena, let us pray over it, and sleep on it. Perchance we may see what to do for the best by morning light. But one thing I pray you, be ready to go, that there may be no time lost if we decide ay and not nay.”
“That will I see to for us all.”
Mr Roberts and Grena left the dining-room, where this conversation had been held, shutting the door behind them. She could be heard going upstairs, he into the garden by the back way. For a few seconds there was dead silence in the room; then the arras parted, and a concealed listener came out. In those days rooms were neither papered nor painted. They were either wainscoted high up the wall with panelled wood, or simply white-washed, and large pieces of tapestry hung round on heavy iron hooks. This tapestry was commonly known as arras, from the name of the French town where it was chiefly woven; and behind it, since it stood forward from the wall, was a most convenient place for a spy. The concealed listener came into the middle of the room. Her face worked with conflicting emotions. She stood for a minute, as it were, fighting out a battle with herself. At length she clenched her hand as if the decision were reached, and said aloud and passionately, “I will not!” That conclusion arrived at, she went hastily but softly out of the room, and closed the door noiselessly.
Mistress Grena was very busy in her own room, secretly packing up such articles as she had resolved to take in the event of her journey being made. She had told Margery, the old housekeeper, that she was going to be engaged, and did not wish to be disturbed. If any visitors came Mistress Gertrude could entertain them; and she desired Margery to transmit her commands to that effect to the young lady. That Gertrude herself would interrupt her she had very little fear. They had few tastes and ideas in common. Gertrude would spend the afternoon in the parlour with her embroidery or her virginals—the piano of that time—and was not likely to come near her. This being the case, Mistress Grena was startled and disturbed to hear a rap at her door. Trusting that it was Mr Roberts who wanted her, and who was the only likely person, she went to open it.
“May I come in, Aunt Grena?” said Gertrude.
For a moment Grena hesitated. Then she stepped back and let her niece enter. Her quick, quiet eyes discerned that something was the matter. This was a new Gertrude at her door, a grave, troubled Gertrude, brought there by something of more importance than usual.
“Well, niece, what is it?”
“Aunt Grena, give me leave for once to speak freely.”
“So do, my dear maid.”
“You and my father are talking of escape to Shardeford, but you scarce know whether to go or no. Let me tell you, and trust me, for my knowledge is costly matter. Let us go.”
Grena stood in amazed consternation. She had said and believed that God would show them what to do, but the very last person in her world through whose lips she expected Him to speak was Gertrude Roberts.
“How—what—who told you? an angel?” she gasped incoherently.
A laugh, short and unmirthful, was the answer.
“Truly, no,” said Gertrude. “It was a fallen angel if it were.”
“What mean you, niece? This is passing strange!” said Grena, in a troubled tone.
“Aunt, I have a confession to make. Despise me if you will; you cannot so do more than I despise myself. ’Tis ill work despising one’s self; but I must, and as penalty for mine evil deeds I am forcing myself to own them to you. You refuse to leave me, for my mother’s sake, to go to an ill end; neither will I so leave you.”
“When heard you me so to speak, Gertrude?”
“Not an hour since, Aunt Grena.”
“You were not present!”
“I was, little as you guessed it. I was behind the arras.”
“Wicked, mean, dishonourable girl!” cried Mistress Grena, in a mixture of horror, confusion, and alarm.
“I own it, Aunt Grena,” said Gertrude, with a quiet humility which was not natural to her, and which touched Grena against her will. “But hear me out, I pray you, for ’tis of moment to us all that you should so do.”
A silent inclination of her aunt’s head granted her permission to proceed.
“The last time that I went to shrift, Father Bastian bade me tell him if I knew of a surety that you or my father had any thought to leave Kent. That could not I say, of course, and so much I told him. Then he bade me be diligent and discover the same. ‘But after what fashion?’ said I; for I do ensure you that his meaning came not into mine head afore he spake it in plain language. When at last I did conceive that he would have me to spy upon you, at the first I was struck with horror. You had so learned me, Aunt Grena, that the bare thought of such a thing was hateful unto me. This methinks he perceived, and he set him to reason with me, that the command of holy Church sanctified the act done for her service, which otherwise had been perchance unmeet to be done. Still I yielded not, and then he told me flat, that without I did this thing he would not grant me absolution of my sins. Then, but not till then, I gave way. I hid me behind the arras this morning, looking that you should come to hold discourse in that chamber where, saving for meat, you knew I was not wont to be. I hated the work no whit less than at the first; but the fear of holy Church bound me. I heard you say, Aunt Grena”—Gertrude’s voice softened as Grena had rarely heard it—“that you would not leave Father and me—that you could not be happy touching me—that I had no mother save you, and you would not cast me aside to go to an ill end. I saw that Father reckoned it should be to your own hurt if you tarried. And it struck me to the heart that you should be thinking to serve me the while I was planning how to betray you. Yet if Father Bastian refused to shrive me, what should come of me? And all at once, as I stood there hearkening, a word from the Psalter bolted in upon me, a verse that I mind Mother caused me to learn long time agone: ‘I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and so Thou forgavest the wickedness of my sin.’ Then said I to myself, What need I trouble if the priest will not shrive me, when I can go straight unto the Lord and confess to Him? Then came another verse, as if to answer me, that I wist Father Bastian should have brought forth in like case, ‘Whatsoever sins ye retain, they are retained,’ and ‘Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.’ I could not, I own, all at once see my way through these. They did look to say, ‘Unto whom the priest, that is the Church, denieth shrift, the same hath no forgiveness of God.’ For a minute I was staggered, till a blind man came to help me up. Aunt Grena, you mind that blind man in the ninth chapter of Saint John’s Gospel? He was cast forth of the Church, as the Church was in that day; and it was when our Lord heard that they had cast him forth, that He sought him and bade him believe only on Him, the Son of God. You marvel, Aunt, I may well see, that such meditations as these should come to your foolish maid Gertrude. But I was at a point, and an hard point belike. I had to consider my ways, whether I would or no, when I came to this trackless moor, and wist not which way to go, with a precipice nigh at hand. So now, Aunt Grena, I come to speak truth unto you, and to confess that I have been a wicked maid and a fool; and if you count me no more worth the serving or the saving I have demerited that you should thus account me. Only if so be, I beseech you, save yourself!”
Gertrude’s eyes were wet as she turned away.
Grena followed her and drew the girl into her arms.
“My child,” she said, “I never held thee so well worth love and care as now. So be it; we will go to Shardeford.”