"Now, Jack, you know what nobody else knows outside the convent wall. You know why my life is one long prayer and penance. I would I could make it more so than it is. I would have gone a pilgrimage on foot—ay, on my knees to the Holy City, had not my father forbidden, if so might win forgiveness for myself and my friend. I would sleep in my grave every night—I do lie on ashes upon hard boards—I would perform the vilest offices for the poor or the sick; but when think of what Father Barnabas said—that he feared lest the lowest depths of purgatory should be too good for such as she—" Again Anne bowed her head and wept bitterly.
Jack would have given the world to comfort his sister, but he knew not what to say. He saw no comfort himself. He had been brought up to think heresy the worst of sins, beyond even the purifying fires of purgatory. Yet as he heard Anne's tale, and thought of the fair Agnes Harland betrayed by her friend, however innocently, perhaps to a horrible death, perhaps to a living grave worse than any death. As he saw, and understood at a glance, the whole explanation of Anne's conduct—her prayers and tears, and the penances which were wearing out her young life—his whole heart and mind rose in furious rebellion against the faith in which he had grown up. His soul demanded freedom from this intolerable yoke, while at the same time he saw no way of escape.
He turned, and groaned in anguish.
"I have done wrong to tell you this story," said Anne, recalled to some degree of calmness by her brother's agitation. "I have worried and excited you; but oh, dear Jack, if you will only take warning!"
"I am not likely to need the warning," said Jack, with a faint smile, "since I know not how or where I am like to get a sight of the Bible; unless, indeed, I become a priest, and that," said Jack, with sudden vehemence, "I will never do. I will rather keep sheep all my days, or go for a ship's boy, like Davy Brent."
"Hush!" said Anne, imperatively but yet kindly. "You must be quiet, dear Jack, or you will be worse, and my father will blame me. I am glad, in one way, to have told you this tale. I seem to have relieved my mind of a little of its intolerable load. But, dear brother, you must never breathe a word of what I have said, or you will bring me into terrible trouble."
"I never will—never," replied Jack, throwing his arms round his sister's neck and kissing her. "I am glad you have told me this tale, sad and horrible as it is, because it makes me understand many things which have troubled me and puzzled me. But oh! Anne, it does seem to me as if there must be some other way—some way of escape."
Anne held up her hand to check him. "Not a word of that. Let us say no more."
And, Dame Cicely coming in at the moment, Anne made her escape to her own room.
When Jack saw her again she was pale and calm, and seemed to have once more put on the icy mask of reserve which she had worn so long. But Jack had seen behind that mask, and had found out what it covered. Henceforth he was always ready to take Anne's part, to shield her from remark and blame, and to divert his father's attention when the old man, jovial spirit was vexed with his daughter's asceticism, and he was ready to break out into one those windy gusts of reproof which only made matters worse between the father and child. He would gladly have questioned Anne as to what she had read in Agnes Harland's book, but the only time he ventured to approach the subject with her, she showed so much distress and horror that he determined never to allude to it again.