In these circumstances, may the Lady of Hindlip not, in after days, when the tragic scenes of those fateful years 1605 and 1606 had become a sad, pathetic memory merely, have recalled to mind certain special aspects in the play of the countenance, in the tone of the voice, aye, in the general mien of Father Edward Oldcorne that she had noted shortly from and after the Michaelmas of that unhappy year 1605, forming evidence whence she might draw her own shrewd, wise conclusions?
May not this honourable woman — honourable by nature as well as by name — have recollected that she
had then observed that the holy man sought more than hitherto had been his wont the retirement of his “secret chamber?” That, at that period, he seemed more than ever absorbed, nay hidden, in thought?
May she not have recalled that at that “last” Christmastide, too, he, who was by nature so severely yet sweetly just, and the humblest among men, had shown himself disposed to judge those wicked wrong-doers with a mildness and a leniency that assuredly, perforce, betokened — what? I answer, a consciousness of some high prerogative, some kingly right, abiding in him, whereby he was warranted in thus speaking.
Again; did he not then manifest a disposition, remarkable even in him, to act in diametrical opposition to the ordinary way of men, which is so well expressed by the sarcastic, cynical, yet only too true saying, that “the world is ready enough to laugh with a man, but it leaves him to weep alone.” And this, when “a compassionate silence” (save in extraordinary circumstances) was the utmost that Justice and Charity alike would prompt even a Priest and a Jesuit (nay, even a Priest and a Jesuit of the type of Edward Oldcorne) to display towards the wretched, erring victims of that “ineluctabile fatum,” that resistless decree of the Universe — “The guilty suffer.”
Now, I submit, with sure confidence for an affirmative answer, to the judgment of my candid readers — of my candid readers that know something of human nature, its workings, its windings, and its ways — the question: Whether or not it is not merely possible, but probable, that Mrs. Abington divined that stupendous secret, through and by means of the subtle, yet all-potent, mental sympathy, which must have subsisted betwixt herself and the disciplined, exalted, stately soul, who, as
a Priest — aye! as a very Prophet — this high-born lady, or at least her spouse, had “counted it all honour and all joy” to have harboured, as a beloved spiritual Father, “elect and precious,” for no less than sixteen years?[120]