The autumn days passed quickly over, and with them the last peaceful hours that Inglesant would know for a long time, and that youthful freshness and bloom and peace which he would never know again. Such a haven as this, such purity and holiness, such rest and repose, lovely as the autumn sunshine resting on the foliage and the grass, would never be open to him again. It was long before rest and peace came to him at all, and when they did come, under different skies and an altered life, it was a rest after a stern battle that left its scars deep in his very life; it was apart from every one of his early friends; it was unblest by first love and early glimpse of heaven. It was about the end of October that he received a message from the Jesuit, which was the summons to leave this paradise, sanctified to him by the holiest moments of his life. The family were at evening prayers in the Church when the messenger arrived, and Inglesant, as usual, was kneeling where he could see Mary Collet, and probably was thinking more of her than of the prayers. Nevertheless he remembered afterwards, when he thought during the long lonely hours of every moment spent at Gidding, that the third collect was being read, and that at the words "Lighten our darkness" he looked up at some noise, and saw the sunshine from the west window shining into the Church upon Mary Collet and the kneeling women, and, beyond them, standing in the dark shadow under the window, the messenger of the Jesuit, whom he knew. He got up quietly and went out. From his marriage feast, nay, from the table of the Lord, he would have got up all the same had that summons come to him.
His whole life from his boyhood had been so formed upon the idea of some day proving himself worthy of the confidence reposed in him (that perfect unexpressed confidence which won his very nature to a passionate devotion capable of the supreme action, whatever it might be, to which all his training had tended), that to have faltered at any moment would have been more impossible to him than suicide, than any self-contradictory action could have been—as impossible as for a proud man to become suddenly naturally humble, or a merciful man cruel. That there might have been found in the universe a power capable of overmastering this master passion is possible; hitherto, however, it had not been found.
Outside the Church the messenger gave him a letter from the Jesuit, which, as usual, was very short.
"Johnny, come to me at Oxford as soon as you can. The time for which we have waited is come. The service which you and none other can perform, and which I have always foreseen for you, is waiting to be accomplished. I depend on you."
Inglesant ordered some refreshment to be given to the messenger, and his own horses to be got out. Then he went back into the Church, and waited till the prayers were over.
The family expressed great regret at parting with him; they were in a continual state of apprehension from their Puritan neighbours; but Inglesant's presence was no defence but rather the contrary, and it is possible that some of them may have been glad that he was going.
Mary Collet looked sadly and wistfully at him as they stood before the porch of the house in the setting sunlight, the long shadows resting on the grass, the evening wind murmuring in the tall trees and shaking down the falling leaves.
"Do you know what this service is?" she said at last.
"I cannot make the slightest guess," he answered.
"Whatever it is you will do it?" she asked again.