* * * * *
She had been firmly resolved all the time not to quit her father, and on the first opportunity had given the slip to her company, while the horses were being saddled at Watney's farm. Stealing back through the darkness she had found the house full of uproar, and apparently occupied by strange troopers. Aghast and not knowing what to do, she had bethought herself of the church and there taken refuge. On my first entrance she was horribly alarmed. But as I walked up the aisle, she recognized--so she has since told me a thousand times with pride--my footstep, though it had long been a stranger to her ear, and she had no thought at the moment of seeing me, or hearing the joyful news I brought.
And so my story is told. For what passed then between Petronilla and me lies between my wife and myself. And it is an old, old story, and one which our children have no need to learn, for they have told it, many of them for themselves, and their children are growing up to tell it. I think in some odd corner of the house there may still be found a very ancient swallow's nest, which young girls bring out and look at tenderly; but for my sword-knot I fear it has been worn out these thirty years. What matter, even though it was velvet of Genoa? He that has the substance, lacks not the shadow.
I never saw my father again, nor learned accurately what passed at Watney's farm after Petronilla was missed by her two companions. But one man, whom I could ill spare, was also missing on that night, whose fate is still something of a mystery. That was Martin Luther. I have always believed that he fell in a desperate encounter with my father, but no traces of the struggle, or his body were ever found. The track between Watney's farm and Stratford, however, runs for a certain distance by the river; and at some point on this road I think Martin must have come up with the refugees, and failing either to find Petronilla with them, or to get any satisfactory account of her, must have flung himself on my father and been foiled and killed. The exact truth I have said was never known, though Baldwin and I talked over it again and again; and there were even some who said that a servant much resembling Martin Luther was seen with my father in the Low Countries not a month before his death. I put no credence in this, however, having good reason to think that the poor fool--who was wiser in his sane moments than most men--would never have left my service while the breath remained in his body.
I have heard it said that blood washes out shame. My father was killed in a skirmish in the Netherlands shortly before the peace of Chateau Cambrésis, and about three months after the events here related. I have no doubt that he died as a brave man should; for he had that virtue. He held no communication with me or with any at Coton End later than that which I have here described; but would appear to have entered the service of Cardinal Granvelle, the governor of the Netherlands, for after his death word came to the Duchess of Suffolk that Mistress Anne Cludde had entered a nunnery at Bruges under the Cardinal's auspices. Doubtless she is long since dead.
And so are many others of whom I have spoken--Sir Anthony, the Duchess, Master Bertie, and Master Lindstrom. For forty years have passed since these things happened--years of peaceful, happy life, which have gone by more swiftly, as it seems to me in the retrospect, than the four years of my wanderings. The Lindstroms sought refuge in England in the second year of the Queen, and settled in Lowestoft under the Duchess of Suffolk's protection, and did well and flourished as became them; nor indeed did they find, I trust, others ungrateful, though I experienced some difficulty in inducing Sir Anthony to treat the Dutch burgher as on an equality with himself. Lord Willoughby de Eresby, the Peregrine to whom I stood godfather in St. Willibrod's church at Wesel, is now a middle-aged man and my very good friend, the affection which his mother felt for me having descended to him in full measure. She was indeed such a woman as Her Majesty; large-hearted and free-tongued, of masculine courage and a wonderful tenderness. And of her husband what can I say save that he was a brave Christian--and in peaceful times--a studious gentleman.
But it is not only in vacant seats and gray hairs that I trace the progress of forty years. They have done for England almost all that men hoped they might do in the first dawn of the reign. We have seen great foes defeated, and strong friends gained. We have seen the coinage amended, trade doubled, the Exchequer filled, the roads made good, the poor provided for in a Christian manner, the Church grown strong; all this in these years. We have seen Holland rise and Spain decline, and well may say in the words of the old text, which my grandfather set up over the hall door at Coton, "Frustra, nisi Dominus."