“I am thankful too,” said Chris softly. “I wonder if my father understands.”
“He will, father, he will. But even if he does not—well, God knows all.”
It was evident when Sir James came upstairs presently that he did not understand anything yet, except that Beatrice thought that Ralph had behaved well.
“But it is to my Lord Essex—who has been the worker of all the mischief—that my son is faithful. Is that a good thing then?”
“Why, yes,” said Chris. “You would not have him faithless there too?”
“But would he not be on God’s side at last, if he were against Cromwell?”
The old man was still too much bewildered to understand explanations, and his son was silent.
Chris could not sleep that night, and long after Nicholas lay deep in his pillow, with open mouth and tight eyes, the priest was at the window looking out over the river where the moon hung like a silver shield above Southwark. The meadows beyond the stream were dim and colourless; here and there a roof rose among trees; and straight across the broad water to his feet ran a path of heaving glory, where the strong ripple tossed the silver surface that streamed down upon it from the moon.
London lay round him as quiet as Overfield, and Chris remembered with a stir at his heart his moonlight bathe all those years ago in the lake at home, when he had come back hot from hunting and had slipped down with the chaplain after supper. Then the water had seemed like a cool restful gulf in the world of sensation; the moon had not been risen at first; only the stars pricked above and below in air and water. Then the moon had come up, and a path of splendour had smitten the surface into sight. He had swum up it, he remembered, the silver ripple washing over his shoulders as he went.