Chapter Twenty One.
Check!
Pandora would have spoken as soon as they left the dining-room, but she was stopped by a motion of her aunt’s hand. Mrs Collenwood took her into her own bedroom, shut and barred the door, glanced inside a hanging closet to see that no one was secreted there, and seating herself on the cushioned seat which ran round the inside of the bay window, signed to her niece to take a seat beside her.
“Now, Dorrie, speak thy desire.”
“Aunt Frances, I am surprised with wonder! Pray you, what ail I, that I must quit home thus suddenly? I feel right well, and knew not there was aught ado with mine health.”
Pandora’s voice betrayed a little alarm. It certainly was a startling thing for a girl who felt and believed herself in excellent health, to hear suddenly that unless she had instant change of air, serious consequences might be expected to ensue.
Mrs Collenwood smiled—an affectionate, almost compassionate smile—as she patted Pandora’s shoulder.
“Take thine heart to thee, Dorrie. Thou art not sick, and if I can have thee away in sufficient time, God allowing, thou shalt not be. But I fear, if thou tarry, thou mayest have an attack of a certain pestilence that is rife in Kent at this season.”
“Pestilence, Aunt Frances! I never heard of no such going about. But if so, why I alone? There be Father, and True, and Aunt Grena—should they not go likewise?”
“No fear for Gertrude,” answered Mrs Collenwood, almost sadly. “And not much, methinks, for thy father. I am lesser sure of thine Aunt Grena: but I have not yet been able to prevail with her to accompany us.”
“But what name hath this pestilence, under your good leave, Aunt Frances?”
“It is called, Dorrie—persecution.”
The colour rose slowly in Pandora’s cheeks, until her whole face was suffused.
“Methinks I take you now, Aunt,” she said. “But, if I may have liberty to ask at you, wherefore think you Father and True to be safer than Aunt Grena and I?”
“Because they would yield, Dorrie. I misdoubt any charge brought against Gertrude; ’tis not such as she that come before religious tribunals. They will know they have her safe enough.”
“Aunt Frances,” said Pandora in a whisper, “think you I should not yield?”
“I hope thou wouldst not, Dorrie.”
“But how wist you—how could you know,” asked the girl passionately, “what I had kept so carefully concealed? How could you know that I hated to go to mass, and availed myself of every whit of excuse that should serve my turn to stay away from confession?—that I besought God every night, yea, with tears, to do away this terrible state of matters, and to grant us rulers under whom we might worship Him without fear, according to His will and word? I counted I had hidden mine heart from every eye but His. Aunt Frances, how could you know?”
Mrs Collenwood drew Pandora into her arms.
“Because, my child, I had done the same.”
The girl’s arms came round her aunt’s neck, and their cheeks were pressed close.
“O Aunt Frances, I am so glad! I have so lacked one to speak withal herein! I have thought at times, if I had but one human creature to whom I might say a word!—and then there was nobody but God—I seemed driven to Him alone.”
“That is blessed suffering, my dear heart, which drives souls to God; and there he will come with nought lesser. Dorrie, methinks thou scarce mindest thy mother?”
“Oh, but I do, Aunt! She was the best and dearest mother that ever was. True loves not to talk of her, nor of any that is dead; so that here also I had to shut up my thoughts within myself; but I mind her—ay, that I do!”
“Niece, when she lay of her last sickness, she called me to her, and quoth she—‘Frances, I have been sore troubled for my little Dorrie: but methinks now I have let all go, and have left her in the hands of God. Only if ever the evil days should come again, and persecution arise because of the witness of Jesus, and the Word of God, and the testimony which we hold—tell her, if you find occasion, as her mother’s last dying word to her, that she hold fast the word of the truth of the Gospel, and be not moved away therefrom, neither by persuading nor threatening. ’Tis he that overcometh, and he only, that shall have the crown of life.’ Never till now, Pandora, my dear child, have I told thee these words of thy dead and saintly mother. I pray God lay them on thine heart, that thou mayest stand in the evil day—yea, whether thou escape these things or no, thou mayest stand before the Son of Man at His coming.”
Pandora had hidden her face on Mrs Collenwood’s shoulder.
“Oh, do pray, Aunt Frances!” she said, with a sob.
The days for a week after that were very busy ones. Every day some one or two bags were packed, and quietly conveyed at nightfall by Mrs Collenwood’s own man to an inn about four miles distant. Pandora was kept indoors, except one day, when she went with Mrs Collenwood to take leave of Christie. That morning the priest called and expressed a wish to speak to her: but being told that she was gone to see a friend, said he would call again the following day. Of this they were told on their return. Mrs Collenwood’s cheeks paled a little; then, with set lips, and a firm step, she sought her brother in his closet, or as we should say, his study.
“Tom,” she said, when the door was safely shut, “we must be gone this night.”
Mr Roberts looked up in considerable astonishment.
“This night!—what mean you, Frances? The clouds be gathering for rain, and your departure was fixed for Thursday.”
“Ay, the clouds be gathering,” repeated Mrs Collenwood meaningly, “and I am ’feared Pandora, if not I, may be caught in the shower. Have you not heard that Father Bastian desired to speak with her whilst we were hence this morrow? We must be gone, Tom, ere he come again.”
Mr Roberts, who was busy with his accounts, set down a five as the addition of eight and three, with a very faint notion of what he was doing.
“Well!” he said, in an undecided manner. “Well! it is—it is not—it shall look—”
“How should it look,” replied Mrs Collenwood, with quiet incisiveness, “to see Pandora bound to the stake for burning?”
Mr Roberts threw out his hands as if to push away the terrible suggestion.
“It may come to that, Tom, if we tarry. For, without I mistake, the girl is not made of such willowy stuff as—some folks be.”
She just checked herself from saying, “as you are.”
Mr Roberts passed his fingers through his hair, in a style which said, as plainly as words, that he was about at his wits’ end. Perhaps he had not far to go to reach that locality.
“Good lack!” he said. “Dear heart!—well-a-day!”
“She will be safe with me,” said her aunt, “for a time at least. And if danger draw near there also, I can send her thence to certain friends of mine in a remote part amongst the mountains, where a priest scarce cometh once in three years. And ere that end, God may work changes in this world.”
“Well, if it must be—”
“It must be, Tom; and it shall be for the best.”
“It had been better I had wist nought thereof. They shall be sure to question me.”
Mrs Collenwood looked with a smile of pitying contempt on the man who was weaker than herself. The contempt predominated at first: then it passed into pity.
“Thou shalt know nought more than now, Tom,” she said quietly. “Go thou up, and get thee a-bed, but leave the key of the wicket-gate on this table.”
“I would like to have heard you had gat safe away,” said poor Mr Roberts, feeling in his pockets for the key.
“You would speedily hear if we did not,” was the answer.
Mr Roberts sighed heavily as he laid down the key.
“Well, I did hope to keep me out of this mess. I had thought, by outward conforming, and divers rich gifts to the priest, and so forth— ’Tis hard a man cannot be at peace in his own house.”
“’Tis far harder when he is not at peace in his own soul.”
“Ah!” The tone of the exclamation said that was quite too good to expect, at any rate for the speaker.
Mrs Collenwood laid her hand on her brother’s shoulder.
“Tom, we are parting for a long season—it may be for all time. Suffer me speak one word with thee, for the sake of our loving mother, and for her saintly sake that sleepeth in All Saints’ churchyard, whose head lay on my bosom when her spirit passed to God. There will come a day, good brother, when thou shalt stand before an higher tribunal than that of my Lord Cardinal, to hear a sentence whence there shall be none appeal. What wouldst thou in that day that thou hadst done in this? As thou wilt wish thou hadst done then, do now.”
“I—can’t,” faltered the unhappy waverer.
“I would as lief be scalded and have done with it, Tom, as live in such endless terror of hot water coming nigh me. Depend on it, it should be the lesser suffering in the end.”
“There’s Gertrude,” he suggested in the same tone.
“Leave Gertrude be. They’ll not touch her. Gertrude shall be of that religion which is the fashion, to the end of her days—without the Lord turn her—and folks of that mettle need fear no persecution. Nay, Tom, ’tis not Gertrude that holdeth thee back from coming out on the Lord’s side. God’s side is ever the safest in the end. It is thine own weak heart and weak faith, wherein thou restest, and wilt not seek the strength that can do all things, which God is ready to grant thee but for the asking.”
“You are a good woman, Frances,” answered her brother, with more feeling than he usually showed, “and I would I were more like you.”
“Tarry not there, Tom: go on to ‘I would I were more like Christ.’ There be wishes that fulfil themselves; and aspirations after God be of that nature. And now, dear brother, I commend thee to God, and to the word of His grace. Be thou strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might!”
They kissed each other for the last time, and Mrs Collenwood stood listening to the slow, heavy step which passed up the stairs and into the bedroom overhead. When Mr Roberts had shut and barred his door, she took up the key, and with a sigh which had reference rather to his future than to her present, went to seek Pandora. Their little packages of immediate necessaries were soon made up. When the clock struck midnight—an hour at which in 1557 everybody was in bed—two well cloaked and hooded women crept out of the low-silled window of the dinning-room, and made their silent and solitary way through the shrubs of the pleasure-ground to the little wicket-gate which opened on the Goudhurst road.