From The Month.
CONSTANCE SHERWOOD.
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.
CHAPTER XVII.
When I had been a short time in my Lady Lumley's chamber, my Lord Arundel sent for his granddaughter, who was wont, she told me, at that hour to write letters for him; and I stayed alone with her ladyship, who, as soon as Lady Surrey left us, thus broke forth in her praise:
"Hath any one, think you. Mistress Sherwood, ever pictured or imagined a creature more noble, more toward in disposition, more virtuous in all her actions, of greater courage in adversity or patience under ill-usage than this one, which God hath sent to this house to cheer two lonely hearts, whilst her own is well-nigh broken?"
"Oh, my Lady Lumley!" I exclaimed, "I fear some new misfortune hath befallen this dear lady, who is indeed so rare a piece of goodness that none can exceed in describing her deserts. Hitherto she hath condescended to impart her sorrows to her poor friend; but to-day she shut up her griefs in her own bosom, albeit I could read unspoken suffering in every lineament of her sweet countenance."
"God forgive me," her ladyship replied, "if in speaking of her wrongs I should entertain over-resentful feelings toward her ungracious husband, whom once I did love as a mother, and very loth hath my heart been to condemn him; but now, if it were not that I myself received him in my arms what time he was born, whose life was the cause of my sweet young sister's death, I should doubt he could be her son."
"What fresh injury," I timidly asked, "hath driven Lady Surrey from her house?"
"Her house no longer," quoth Lady Lumley. "She hath no house, no home, no husband worthy of the name, and only an old man nigh unto the grave, alas! and a poor feeble woman such as I am to raise a voice in her behalf, who is spurned by one who should have loved and cherished her, as twice before God's altar he vowed to do. Oh," cried the poor lady, weeping, "she hath borne all things else with a sweet fortitude which angels looking down on her must needs have wondered at. She would ever be excusing this faithless husband with many pretty wiles and loving subterfuges, making, sweet sophist, the worst appear the better reason. 'Men must needs be pardoned,' she would say, when my good father waxed wroth at his ill-usage of her, 'for such outward neglect as many practice in these days toward their wives, for that it was the fashion at the court to appear unhusbandly; but if women would be patient, she would warrant them their love should be requited at last.' And when news came that Phil had sold an estate for to purchase—God save the mark!—a circlet of black pearls for the queen; and Lord Arundel swore he should leave him none of his lands but what by act of parliament he was compelled to do, she smiled winsomely, and said: 'Yea, my lord, I pray you, let my dear Phil be a poor man as his father wished him to be, and then, if it please God, we may live in a cottage and be happy.' And so turned away his anger by soft words, for he [{305}] laughed and answered: 'Heaven help thee. Nan! but I fear that cottage must needs be Arundel Castle, for my hands are so tied therein that thy knavish husband cannot fail to inherit it. And beshrew me if I would either rob thee of it, mine own good Nan, or its old walls of thy sweet presence when I shall be dead.' And so she always pleaded for him, and never lost heart until . . . Oh, Mistress Sherwood, I shall never forget the day when her uncle, Francis Dacre—wisely or unwisely I know not, but surely meaning well—gave her to read in this house, where she was spending a day, a letter which had fallen into his hands, I wot not how, in the which Philip—God forgive him!—expressed some kind of doubt if he was truly married to her or not. Some wily wretch had, I ween, whispered to him, in an evil hour, this accursed thought. When she saw this misdoubt written in his hand she straightway fell down in a swoon, which recovering from, the first thing she did was to ask for her cloak and hat, and would have walked alone to her house if I had not stayed her almost by force, until Lord Arundel's coach could be got ready for her. In less than two hours she returned with so wan and death-like a countenance that it frighted me to see her, and for some time she would not speak of what had passed between her lord and herself; only she asked for to stay always in this house, if it should please her grandfather, and not to part from us any more. At the which speech I could but kiss her, and with many tears protest that this should be the joyfullest news in the world to Lord Arundel and to me, and what he would most desire, if it were not for her grief, which, like an ill wind, yet did blow us this good. 'Yea,' she answered, with the deepest sigh which can be thought of, 'a cold, withering blast which driveth me from the shelter which should be mine! I have heard it said that when Cardinal Wolsey lay a-dying he cried, "It were well with me now if I had served my God with the like zeal with which I have served my king," or some words of that sort. Oh, my Lady Lumley!' the poor child exclaimed, 'if I had not loved Philip more than God and his Church, methinks I should not thus be cast off!' 'Cast off,' I cried; 'and has my graceless nephew, then, been so wicked?' 'Oh, he is changed,' she answered—'he is changed. In his eyes, in his voice, I found not Philip's looks, nor Philip's tones. Nought but harshness and impatience to dismiss me. The queen, he said, was coming to rest at his house on her way to the city, and he lacked leisure to listen to my complaints. Then I felt grief and anger rise in my breast with such vehemency that I charged him, maybe too suddenly, with the doubt he had expressed in his letter to my Lord Oxford. His face flushed deeply; but drawing up haughtily, as one aggrieved, he said the manner of our marrying had been so unusual that there were some, and those persons well qualified to judge, who misdoubted if there did not exist a flaw in its validity. That he should himself be loth to think so, but that to seek at that moment to prove the contrary, when his fortunes hung on a thread, would be to ruin him.'
"There she paused, and clasped her hands together as if scarce able to proceed; but soon raising her head, she related in a passionate manner how her heart had then swelled well-nigh to bursting, pride and tenderness restraining the utterance of such resentful thoughts as rose in her when she remembered his father's last letter, wherein he said his chief prop and stay in his fallen estate should be the wife he had bestowed on him; of her own lands sold for the supply of his prodigal courtiership; of her long patience and pleading for him to others; and this his present treatment of her, which no wife could brook, even if of mean birth and virtue, much loss one his equal in condition, as well dowered as any in the land, [{306}] and as faithful and tender to him as he did prove untoward to her. But none of these reproaches passed her lips; for it was an impossible thing to her, she said, to urge her own deserts, or so much as mention the fortune she had brought him. Only twice she repeated, 'Ruin your fortunes, my lord! ruin your fortunes! God help me, I had thought rather to mend them!' And then, when he tried to answer her in some sort of evading fashion, as if unsaying, and yet not wholly denying his former speech, she broke forth (and in the relation of this scene the passion of her grief renewed itself) in vehement adjurations, which seemed somewhat to move him, not to be so unjust to her or to himself as to leave that in uncertainty which so nearly touched both their honors; and if the thought of a mutual love once existing between them, and a firm bond of marriage relied on with unshaken security, and his father's dying blessing on it, and the humble duty she had shown him from the time she had borne his name, sufficed not to resolve him thereunto, yet for the sake of justice to one fatherless and brotherless as herself, she charged him without delay to make that clear which, left uncertain, concerned her more nearly than fortune or state, and without which no, not one day, would she abide in his house. Then the sweet soul said she hoped, from his not ungracious silence and the working of his features, which visibly revealed an inward struggle, that his next words should have been of comfort to her; but when she had drawn nigh to him, and, taking his hand, called him by his name with so much of reproachful endearment as could be expressed in the utterance of it, a gentleman broke into the room crying out: 'My lord, my lord, the trumpets do sound! The queen's coach is in sight.' Upon which, she said that, with a muttered oath, he started up and almost thrust her from him, saying, 'For God's sake, be gone!' And by a back-door,' she added, 'I went out of mine own house into the street, where I had left my Lord Arundel's coach, and crept into it, very faint and giddy, the while the queen's coach did enter the court with gay banners waving, and striking-up of music, and the people crying out, "God bless the queen!" I cry God mercy for it,' she said, 'but I could not say amen.' Now she is resolved," my Lady Lumley continued, "never to set her foot again in any of her husband's houses, except he doth himself entreat her to it, and makes that matter clear touching his belief in the validity of their marriage; and methinks she is right therein. My Lord Arundel hath written to remonstrate with his grandson touching his ill-usage of his lady, and hath also addressed her majesty thereupon. But all the comment she did make on his letter, I have been told, was this: 'That she had heard my Lord Arundel was in his dotage; and verily she did now hold it to be so, for that she had never received a more foolish letter; and she did pity the old white horse, which was now only fit to be turned out to grass;' and other biting jests, which, when a sovereign doth utter them, carry with them a rare poignancy."
Then my Lady Lumley wiped her eyes, and bade me to be of good cheer, and not to grieve overmuch for Lady Surrey's troubles (but all the while her own tears continued to flow), for that she had so noble and religious a disposition, with germs of so much virtue in it, that she thought her to be one of those souls whom Almighty God draws to himself by means of such trials as would sink common natures; and that she had already marked how, in much prayer, ever-increasing good works, and reading of books which treat of wholesome doctrine and instruction, she presently recalled the teachings of her childhood, and took occasion, when any Catholics came to the house, to converse with them touching religion. Then, with many kind expressions, she dismissed me; and on the stairs, as I went out, I met [{307}] Lady Surrey, who noticed mine eyes to be red with weeping, and, embracing me, said: