CHAPTER VI
I
It was on a bright evening in the summer that Marjorie, with her maidJanet, came riding down to Padley, and about the same time a young mancame walking up the track that led from Derby. In fact, the young mansaw the two against the skyline and wondered who they were. Further,there was a group of four or five walking on the terrace below thehouse, that saw both the approaching parties, and commented upon theircoming.
To be precise, there were four persons in the group on the terrace, anda man-servant who hung near. The four were Mr. John FitzHerbert, his sonThomas, his son's wife, and, in the midst, leaning on Mrs. FitzHerbert'sarm, was old Sir Thomas himself, and it was for his sake that theservant was within call, for he was still very sickly after his longimprisonment, in spite of his occasional releases.
Mr. John saw the visitors first.
"Why, here is the company all arrived together," he said. "Now, ifanything hung on that--" his son broke in, uneasily.
"You are sure of young Owen?" he said. "Our lives will all hang on himafter this."
His father clapped him gently on the shoulder.
"Now, now!" he said. "I know him well enough, from my lord. He hath madea dozen such places in this county alone."
Mr. Thomas glanced swiftly at his uncle.
"And you have spoken with him, too, uncle?"
The old man turned his melancholy eyes on him.
"Yes; I have spoken with him," he said.
* * * * *
Five minutes later Marjorie was dismounted, and was with him. Shegreeted old Sir Thomas with particular respect; she had talked with hima year ago when he was first released that he might raise his fines; andshe knew well enough that his liberty was coming to an end. In fact, hewas technically a prisoner even now; and had only been allowed to comefor a week or two from Sir Walter Aston's house before going back againto the Fleet.
"You are come in good time," said Sir John, smiling.
"That is young Owen himself coming up the path."
There was nothing particularly noticeable about the young man who aminute later was standing before them with his cap in his hand. He wasplainly of the working class; and he had over his shoulder a bag oftools. He was dusty up to the knees with his long tramp. Mr. John gavehim a word of welcome; and then the whole group went slowly togetherback to the house, with the two men following. Sir Thomas stumbled alittle going up the two or three steps into the hall. Then they all satdown together; the servant put a big flagon and a horn tumbler besidethe traveller, and went out, closing the doors.
"Now, my man," said Mr. John. "Do you eat and drink while I do thetalking. I understand you are a man of your hands, and that you havebusiness elsewhere."
"I must be in Lancashire by the end of the week, sir."
"Very well, then. We have business enough for you, God knows! This isMistress Manners, whom you may have heard of. And after you have lookedat the places we have here--you understand me?--Mistress Manners wantsyou at her house at Booth's Edge.... You have any papers?"
Owen leaned back and drew out a paper from his bag of tools.
"This is from Mr. Fenton, sir."
Mr. John glanced at the address; then he turned it over and broke theseal. He stared for a moment at the open sheet.
"Why, it is blank!" he said.
Owen smiled. He was a grave-looking lad of eighteen or nineteen yearsold; and his face lighted up very pleasantly.
"I have had that trick played on me before, sir, in my travels. Iunderstand that Catholic gentlemen do so sometimes to try the fidelityof the messenger."
The other laughed out loud, throwing back his head.
"Why, that is a poor compliment!" he said. "You shall have a better onefrom us, I have no doubt."
Mr. Thomas leaned over the table and took the paper. He examined it verycarefully; then he handed it back. His father laughed again as he tookit.
"You are very cautious, my son," he said. "But it is wise enough....Well, then," he went on to the carpenter, "you are willing to do thiswork for us? And as for payment--"
"I ask only my food and lodging," said the lad quietly; "and enough tocarry me on to the next place."
"Why--" began the other in a protest.
"No, sir; no more than that...." He paused an instant. "I hope to beadmitted to the Society of Jesus this year or next."
There was a pause of astonishment. And then old Sir Thomas' deep voicebroke in.
"You do very well, sir. I heartily congratulate you. And I would I weretwenty years younger myself...."
II
After supper that night the entire party went upstairs to the chapel.
Young Hugh Owen even already was beginning to be known among Catholics,for his extraordinary skill in constructing hiding-holes. Up to thepresent not much more had been attempted than little secret recesseswhere the vessels of the altar and the vestments might be concealed. Butthe young carpenter had been ingenious enough in two or three houses towhich he had been called, to enlarge these so considerably that even twoor three men might be sheltered in them; and, now that it seemed as ifthe persecution of recusants was to break out again, the idea began tospread. Mr. John FitzHerbert while in London had heard of his skill, andhad taken means to get at the young man, for his own house at Padley.
* * * * *
Owen was already at work when the party came upstairs. He had suppedalone, and, with a servant to guide him, had made the round of thehouse, taking measurements in every possible place. He was seated on thefloor as they came in; three or four panels lay on the ground besidehim, and a heap of plaster and stones.
He looked up as they came in.
"This will take me all night, sir," he said. "And the fire must be putout below."
He explained his plan. The old hiding-place was but a poor affair; itconsisted of a space large enough for only one man, and was contrived bya section of the wall having been removed, all but the outer row ofstones made thin for the purpose; the entrance to it was through a tallsliding panel on the inside of the chapel. Its extreme weakness as ahiding-hole lay in the fact that anyone striking on the panel could notfail to hear how hollow it rang. This he proposed to do away with,unless, indeed, he left a small space for the altar vessels; and toconstruct instead a little chamber in the chimney of the hall that wasbuilt against this wall; he would contrive it so that an entrance wasstill from the chapel, as well as one that he would make over the hearthbelow; and that the smoke should be conducted round the little enclosedspace, passing afterwards up the usual vent. The chamber would be largeenough, he thought, for at least two men. He explained, too, his methodof deadening the hollowness of the sound if the panel were knocked upon,by placing pads of felt on struts of wood that would be set against thepanel-door.
"Why, that is very shrewd!" cried Mr. John. He looked round the facesfor approval.
For an hour or so, the party sat and watched him at his work; andMarjorie listened to their talk. It was of that which filled the heartsof all Catholics at this time; of the gathering storm in England, of thepriests that had been executed this very year--Mr. Paine at Chelmsford,in March; Mr. Forde, Mr. Shert and Mr. Johnson, at Tyburn in May, thefirst of the three having been taken with Father Campion atLyford--deaths that were followed two days later by the execution offour more--one of whom, Mr. Filbie, had also been arrested at Lyford.And there were besides a great number more in prison--Mr. Cottam, it wasknown, had been taken at York, scarcely a week ago, and, it was said,would certainly suffer before long.
They talked in low voices; for the shadow was on all their hearts. Ithad been possible almost to this very year to hope that the misery wouldbe a passing one; but the time for hope was gone. It remained only tobear what came, to multiply priests, and, if necessary, martyrs, andmeantime to take such pains for protection as they could.
"He will be a clever pursuivant who finds this one out," said Mr. John.
The carp
enter looked up from his work.
"But a clever one will find it," he said.
Mr. Thomas was heard to sigh.
III
It was on the afternoon of the following day that Marjorie rode up toher house with Janet beside her, and Hugh Owen walking by her horse.
He had finished his work at Padley an hour or two after dawn--for heworked at night when he could, and had then gone to rest. But he hadbeen waiting for her when her horses were brought, and asked if he mightwalk with her; he had asked it simply and easily, saying that it mightsave his losing his way, and time was precious to him.
* * * * *
Marjorie felt very much interested by this lad, for he was no more thanthat. In appearance he was like any of his kind, with a countryman'sface, in a working-dress: she might have seen him by chance a hundredtimes and not known him again. But his manner was remarkable, so whollysimple and well-bred: he was courteous always, as suited his degree; buthe had something of the same assurance that she had noticed so plainlyin Father Campion. (He talked with a plain, Northern dialect.)
Presently she opened on that very point; for she could talk freelybefore Janet.
"Did you ever know Father Campion?" she asked.
"I have never spoken with him, mistress. I have heard him preach. It wasthat which put it in my heart to join the company."
"You heard him preach?"
"Yes, mistress; three or four times in Essex and Hertfordshire. I heardhim preach upon the young man who came to our Saviour."
"Tell me," she said, looking down at what she could see of his face.
"It was liker an angel than a man," he said quietly. "I could not takemy eyes off him from his first word to the last. And all were the samethat were there."
"Was he eloquent?"
"Aye; you might call it that. But I thought it to be the Spirit of God."
"And it was then you made up your mind to join the Society?"
"There was no rest for me till I did. 'And Christ also went awaysorrowful,' were his last words. And I could not bear to think that."
Marjorie was silent through pure sympathy. This young man spoke alanguage she understood better than that which some of her friendsused--Mr. Babington, for instance. It was the Person of Jesus Christthat was all her religion to her; it was for this that she was devout,that she went to mass and the sacraments when she could; it was thisthat made Mary dear to her. Was He not her son? And, above all, it wasfor this that she had sacrificed Robin: she could not bear that heshould not serve Him as a priest, if he might. But the other talk thatshe had heard sometimes--of the place of religion in politics, and thejustification of this or that course of public action--well, she knewthat these things must be so; yet it was not the manner of her own mostintimate thought, and the language of it was not hers.
The two went together so a few paces, without speaking. Then she had asudden impulse.
"And do you ever think of what may come upon you?" she asked. "Do youever think of the end?
"Aye," he said.
"And what do you think the end will be?"
She saw him raise his eyes to her an instant.
"I think," he said, "that I shall die for my faith some day."
That same strange shiver that passed over her at her mother's bedside,passed over her again, as if material things grew thin about her. Therewas a tone in his voice that made it absolutely clear to her that he wasnot speaking of a fancy, but of some certain knowledge that he had. Yetshe dared not ask him, and she was a middle-aged woman before the newscame to her of his death upon the rack.
IV
It was a sleepy-eyed young man that came into the kitchen early nextmorning, where the ladies and the maids were hard at work all togetherupon the business of baking. The baking was a considerable task eachweek, for there were not less than twenty mouths, all told, to feed inthe hall day by day, including a widow or two that called each day forrations; and a great part, therefore, of a mistress's time in suchhouses was taken up with such things.
Marjorie turned to him, with her arms floured to the elbow.
"Well?" she said, smiling.
"I have done, mistress. Will it please you to see it before I go andsleep?"
They had examined the house carefully last night, measuring and soundingin the deep and thin walls alike, for there was at present noconvenience at all for a hunted man. Owen had obtained her consent totwo or three alternative proposals, and she had then left him tohimself. From her bed, that she had had prepared, with AliceBabington's, in a loft--turning out for the night the farm-men who hadusually slept there, she had heard more than once the sound of distanthammering from the main front of the house where her own room lay, thathad been once her mother's as well.
The possibilities in this little manor were small. To construct apassage, giving an exterior escape, as had been made in some houses,would have meant here a labour of weeks, and she had told the young manshe would be content with a simple hiding-hole. Yet, although she didnot expect great things, and knew, moreover, the kind of place that hewould make, she was as excited as a child, in a grave sort of way, atwhat she would see.
He took her first into the parlour, where years ago Robin had talkedwith her in the wintry sunshine. The open chimney was on the right asthey entered, and though she knew that somewhere on that same side wouldbe one of the two entrances that had been arranged, all the differenceshe could see was that a piece of the wall-hanging that had been betweenthe window and the fire was gone, and that there hung in its place anold picture painted on a panel. She looked at this without speaking: thewall was wainscoted in oak, as it had always been, six feet up from thefloor. Then an idea came to her: she tilted the picture on one side. Butthere was no more to be seen than a cracked panel, which, it seemed toher, had once been nearer the door. She rapped upon this, but it gaveback the dull sound as of wood against stone.
She turned to the young man, smiling. He smiled back.
"Come into the bedroom, mistress."
He led her in there, through the passage outside into which the twodoors opened at the head of the outside stairs; but here, too, all thatshe could see was that a tall press that had once stood between thewindows now stood against the wall immediately opposite to the paintedpanel on the other side of the wall. She opened the doors of the press,but it was as it had always been: there even hung there the three orfour dresses that she had taken from it last night and laid on the bed.
She laughed outright, and, turning, saw Mistress Alice Babington beamingtranquilly from the door of the room.
"Come in, Alice," she said, "and see this miracle."
Then he began to explain it.
* * * * *
On this side was the entrance proper, and, as he said so, he stepped upinto the press and closed the doors. They could hear him fumblingwithin, then the sound of wood sliding, and finally a muffled voicecalling to them. Marjorie flung the doors open, and, save for thedresses, it was empty. She stared in for a moment, still hearing themovements of someone beyond, and at last the sound of a snap; and as shewithdrew her head to exclaim to Alice, the young man walked into theroom through the open door behind her.
Then he explained it in full.
The back of the press had been removed, and then replaced, in such amanner that it would slide out about eighteen inches towards the window,but only when the doors of the press were closed; when they were opened,they drew out simultaneously a slip of wood on either side that pulledthe sliding door tight and immovable. Behind the back of the press, thusremoved, a corresponding part of the wainscot slid in the same way,giving a narrow doorway into the cell which he had excavated between thedouble beams of the thick wall. Next, when the person that had takenrefuge was inside, with the two sliding doors closed behind him, it waspossible for him, by an extremely simple device, to turn a wooden buttonand thus release a little wooden machinery which controlled a furtheropening into the parlour, and whic
h, at the same time, was bracedagainst the hollow panelling and one of the higher beams in such amanner as to give it, when knocked upon, the dullness of sound the girlhad noticed just now. But this door could only be opened from within.Neither a fugitive nor a pursuer could make any entrance from theparlour side, unless the wainscoting itself were torn off. Lastly, thecrack in the woodwork, corresponding with two minute holes bored in thepainted panel, afforded, when the picture was hung exactly straight, aview of the parlour that commanded nearly all the room.
"I do not pretend that it is a fortress," said the young man, smilinggravely. "But it may serve to keep out a country constable. And, indeed,it is the best I can contrive in this house."