“The angels obey the Lord, my Christie, and the Lord is very gentle. He ‘knoweth our frame,’ and ‘remembereth that we are but dust.’”
“I don’t feel much like dust,” said Christie meditatively. “I feel more like strings that somebody had pulled tight till it hurt. But I do wish Aunt Tabitha would obey the Lord too, Father. I can’t think she knows our frame, unless hers is vastly unlike mine.”
“I rather count it is, Christie,” said Roger.
Mr Benden had come out for his airing in an unhappy frame of mind, and his interview with Tabitha sent him home in a worse. Could he by an effort of will have obliterated the whole of his recent performances, he would gladly have done it; but as this was impossible, he refused to confess himself in the wrong. He was not going to humble himself, he said gruffly—though there was nobody to hear him—to that spiteful cat Tabitha. As to Alice, he was at once very angry with her, and very much put out by her absence. It was all her fault, he said again. Why could she not behave herself at first, and come to church like a reasonable woman, and as everybody else did? If she had stood out for a new dress, or a velvet hood, he could have understood it; but these new-fangled nonsensical fancies nobody could understand. Who could by any possibility expect a sensible man to give in to such rubbish?
So Mr Benden reasoned himself into the belief that he was an ill-used martyr, Alice a most unreasonable woman, and Tabitha a wicked fury. Having no principles himself, that any one else should have them was both unnecessary and absurd in his eyes. He simply could not imagine the possibility of a woman caring so much for the precepts or the glory of God, that she was ready for their sakes to brave imprisonment, torture, or death.
Meanwhile Alice and her fellow-prisoner, Rachel Potkin, were engaged in trying their scheme of living on next to nothing. We must not forget that even poor people, at that time, lived much better than now, so far as eating is concerned. The Spanish noblemen who came over with Queen Mary’s husband were greatly astonished to find the English peasants, as they said, “living in hovels, and faring like princes.” The poorest then never contented themselves with plain fare, such as we think tea and bread, which are now nearly all that many poor people see from one year’s end to another. Meat, eggs, butter, and much else were too cheap to make it necessary.
So Alice and Rachel arranged their provisions thus: every two days they sent for two pounds of mutton, which cost some days a farthing, and some a halfpenny; twelve little loaves of bread, at 2 pence; a pint and a half of claret, or a quart of ale, cost 2 pence more. The halfpenny, which was at times to spare, they spent on four eggs, a few rashers of bacon, or a roll of butter, the price of which was fourpence-halfpenny the gallon. Sometimes it went for salt, an expensive article at that time. Now and then they varied their diet from mutton to beef; but of this they could get only half the quantity for their halfpenny. On fish-days, then rigidly observed, of course they bought fish instead of meat. For a fortnight they kept up this practice, which to them seemed far more of a hardship than it would to us; they were accustomed to a number of elaborate dishes, with rich sauces, in most of which wine was used; and mere bread and meat, or even bread and butter, seemed very poor, rough eating. Perhaps, if our ancestors had been content with simpler cookery, their children in the present day would have had less trouble with doctors’ bills.
Roger Hall visited his sister, as he had said, on Saint Edmund’s Day, the sixteenth of November. He found her calm, and even cheerful, very much pleased with her father’s message and gift, and concerned that Mary should follow her directions to make Mr Benden comfortable. That she forgave him she never said in words, but all her actions said it strongly. Roger had to curb his own feelings as he promised to take the message to this effect which Alice sent to Mary. But Alice could pretty well see through his face into his heart, and into Mary’s too; and she looked up with a smile as she added a few words:—
“Tell Mall,” she said, “that if she love me, and would have me yet again at home, methinks this were her wisest plan.”
Roger nodded, and said no more.