For God and Gold

by Julian Stafford Corbett

But I drew back, feeling very country-bred, and blushed, and then a flush of sunset hue made her beauty radiant, and Harry laughed at us his rattling laugh, which his wife could only stop with kisses.

That made her my sister indeed. At first I had thought her manner tainted with too much Court freedom, but now she seemed a most wise and modest lady, who might in deed as well as word be a true sister to me. So we talked together pleasantly enough till it was time to go, nor did we stop our tongues as we rode out towards Ashtead. And yet again, now I bethink me, it was I that talked and she that listened, while Harry smiled to see us such good friends.

I thinked he wondered, too, to hear me, and I am sure I marvelled at myself no less than that she should want to listen to my homily. Yet whenever my tongue ceased wagging, she had some little magic phrase or witch's glance to set it a-gallop again, and I felt I could talk to her till the sun grew cold.

'It is a scholar,' she said, as we came to the place where our ways parted, 'that I have always desired to call "brother." Some one whose mouth would be all my books in little, just as was my Lord Bedford's when I was a little girl. And now methinks you have bestowed on me all my desire.'

'Indeed you wrong yourself and me. I am not such a one, though I think my master, Mr. Cartwright, is.'

'Ah, I have heard of him that he is a ripe scholar for all his wild doctrine; and now I know it, for I hear his pupil talk. I think Hal must speak no more than truth when he says you have read more books than Mr. Ascham himself.'

'I tell you, sister, you must not mark his commendations, that are bred in love and not in reason.'

'Now, I cry you mercy. You must not tell a new-wed wife that love and reason are not one. That were a philosophy fit for none but monkish scholars. There I must school you, and you me in all else but that. So I will prove a most gentle scholar; and now farewell, my brother, since it is here our ways are parting.'

Mark what a change had come over my life since I travelled the road but a few hours ago. I had ridden into Rochester from pure good manners, thinking to carry a cold greeting to Harry's wife, and so return to my books and loneliness. How differently had it fallen out! Since I left Longdene I had found a sister—a courtly and beautiful woman to whom I could talk, and who would talk kindly to me. I knew not what to think as I rode slowly along, with the shouts of the crowds which had gathered to welcome Harry and his wife coming faintly to my ears across the fields on the still evening air.

It had been the first hot day of summer, and as the night fell I sat in my old corner in the library at the open lattice, watching the golden labyrinth that broke up the dark stretch of the marshes into a hundred fantastic shapes of gloomy hue wherever the intricate channels caught the glow of the dying sunset.