“What is like to come of the woman, then?” said Mr Roberts, “apart from Mistress Tabitha and her whip?”
“Scarce release, I count,” said the Justice gravely. “She hath been moved from the gaol; and that doubtless meaneth, had into straiter keeping.”
“Poor fools!” said his brother, rather pityingly than scornfully.
“Ay, ’tis strange, in very deed, they cannot let be this foolish meddling with matters too high for them. If the woman would but conform and go to church, I hear, her womanish fantasies should very like be overlooked. Good lack I can a man not believe as he list, yet hold his tongue and be quiet, and not bring down the laws on his head?” concluded the Justice somewhat testily.
There was a pause, during which all were silent—from very various motives. Mr Roberts was thinking rather sadly that the only choice offered to men in those days was a choice of evils. He had never wished to conform—never would have done so, had he been let alone: but a man must look out for his safety, and take care of his property—of course he must!—and if the authorities made it impossible for him to do so with a good conscience, why, the fault was theirs, not his. Thus argued Mr Roberts, forgetting that the man makes a poor bargain who gains the whole world and loses himself. The Justice and Gertrude were simply enjoying their supper. No scruples of any kind disturbed their slumbering consciences. Mistress Collenwood’s face gave no indication of her thoughts. Pandora was reflecting chiefly upon Christabel.
But there was one present whose conscience had been asleep, and was just waking to painful life. For nearly four years had Grena Holland soothed her many misgivings by some such reasoning as that of Mr Justice Roberts. She had conformed outwardly: had not merely abstained from contradictory speeches, but had gone to mass, had attended the confessional, had bowed down before images of wood and stone, and all the time had comforted herself by imagining that God saw her heart, and knew that she did not really believe in any of these things, but only acted thus for safety’s sake. Now, all at once, she knew not how, it came on her as by a flash of lightning that she was on the road that leadeth to destruction, and not content with that, was bearing her young nieces along with her. She loved those girls as if she had been their own mother. Grave, self-contained, and undemonstrative as she was, she would almost have given her life for either, but especially for Pandora, who in face, and to some extent in character, resembled her dead mother, the sister who had been the darling of Grena Holland’s heart. She recalled with keen pain the half-astonished, half-shrinking look on Pandora’s face, as she had followed her to mass on the first holy-day after her return from Lancashire. Grena knew well that at Shardeford Hall, her mother’s house in Lancashire, Pandora would never have been required to attend mass, but would have been taught that it was “a fond fable and a dangerous deceit.” And now, she considered, that look had passed from the girl’s face; she went silently, not eagerly on the one hand, yet unprotestingly, even by look, on the other. Forward into the possible future went Grena’s imagination—to the prison, and the torture-chamber, and the public disgrace, and the awful death of fire. How could she bear those, either for herself or for Pandora?
These painful meditations were broken in upon by a remark from the Justice.
“There is some strong ale brewing, I warrant you, for some of our great doctors and teachers of this vicinage. I heard t’other day, from one that shall be nameless—indeed, I would not mention the matter, but we be all friends and good Catholics here—”
Mistress Collenwood’s eyes were lifted a moment from her plate, but then went down again in silence.
“Well, I heard say two men of my Lord Cardinal’s had already been a-spying about these parts, for to win the names of such as were suspect: and divers in and nigh Staplehurst shall hear more than they wot of, ere many days be over. Mine hostess at the White Hart had best look out, and—well, there be others; more in especial this Master Ro— Come, I’ll let be the rest.”