CHAPTER VI
I
It was a great day and a solemn when the squire of Matstead went toProtestant communion for the first time. It was Easter Day, too, butthis was less in the consideration of the village. There was first theminister, Mr. Barton, in a condition of excited geniality from an earlyhour. He was observed soon after it was light, by an old man who was upbetimes, hurrying up the village street in his minister's cassock andgown, presumably on his way to see that all preparations were completefor the solemnity. His wife was seen to follow him a few minutes later.
By eight o'clock the inhabitants of the village were assembled at pointsof vantage; some openly at their doors; others at the windows; andgroups from the more distant farms, decked suitably, stood at allcorners; to be greeted presently by their minister hurrying back oncemore from the church to bring the communion vessels and the bread andwine. The four or five soldiers of the village--a couple of billmen andpikemen and a real gunner--stood apart in an official group, but did notsalute him. He did not speak of that which was in the minds of all, buthe waved a hand to this man, bid a happy Easter to another, anddisappeared within his lodgings leaving a wake of excitement behind him.
By a quarter before nine the three bells had begun to jangle from thetower; and the crowd had increased largely, when Mr. Barton once morepassed to the church in the spring sunshine, followed by the more devoutwho wished to pray, and the more timid who feared a disturbance. Forsentiments were not wholly on the squire's side. There was first anumber of Catholics, openly confessed or at least secretly Catholic,though these were not in full force since most were gone to Padleybefore dawn; and there was next a certain sentiment abroad, even amongstthose who conformed, in favour of tradition. That the squire of Matsteadshould be a Catholic was at least as fundamental an article of faith asthat the minister should be a Protestant. There was little or nohot-gospel here; men still shook their heads sympathetically over theold days and the old faith, which indeed had ceased to be the faith ofall scarcely twenty years ago; and it appeared to the most of them thatthe proper faith of the Quality, since they had before their eyes suchfamilies as the Babingtons, the Fentons, and the FitzHerberts, was thatto which their own squire was about to say good-bye. It was known, too,publicly by now, that Mr. Robin was gone away for Easter, since he wouldnot follow his father. So the crowd waited; the dogs sunned themselves;and the gunner sat on a wall.
* * * * *
The bells ceased at nine o'clock, and upon the moment, a group cameround the churchyard wall, down from the field-path and the stile thatled to the manor.
First, walking alone, came the squire, swiftly and steadily. His facewas flushed a little, but set and determined. He was in his fineclothes, ruff and all; his rapier was looped at his side, and he carrieda stick. Behind him came three or four farm servants; then a yeoman andhis wife; and last, at a little distance, three or four onlookers.
There was dead silence as he came; the hum of talk died at the corners;the bells' clamour had even now ceased. It seemed as if each man waitedfor his neighbour to speak. There was only the sound of the squire'sbrisk footsteps on the few yards of cobbles that paved the walk up tothe lych-gate. At the door of the church, seen beyond him, was a crowdof faces.
Then a man called something aloud from fifty yards away; but there wasno voice to echo him. The folk just watched their lord go by, staring onhim as on some strange sight, forgetting even to salute him. And so insilence he passed on.
II
Within, the church murmured with low talking. Already two-thirds of itwas full, and all faces turned and re-turned to the door at everyfootstep or sound. As the bells ceased a sigh went up, as if a giantdrew breath; then, once again, the murmuring began.
The church was as most were in those days. It was but a little place,yet it had had in old days great treasures of beauty. There had been,until some ten or twelve years ago, a carved screen that ran across thechancel arch, with the Rood upon it, and St. Mary and St. John on thisside and that. The high-altar, it was remembered, had been of stonethroughout, surrounded with curtains on the three sides, hanging betweenposts that had each a carven angel, all gilt. Now all was gone,excepting only the painted windows (since glass was costly). The chancelwas as bare as a barn; beneath the whitewash, high over the place wherethe old canopy had hung, pale colours still glimmered through where,twelve years ago, Christ had sat crowning His Mother. The altar wasgone; its holy slab served now as the pavement within the west door,where the superstitious took pains to step clear of it. The screen wasgone; part lay beneath the tower; part had been burned; Christ's Crossheld up the roof of the shed where the minister kept his horse; thethree figures had been carted off to Derby to help swell the Protestantbonfire. The projecting stoup to the right of the main door had beenbroken half off.... In place of these glories there stood now, in thebody of the church, before the chancel-steps, a great table, such as therubrics of the new Prayer-Book required, spread with a white cloth, uponwhich now rested two tall pewter flagons of wine, a flat pewter plate asgreat as a small dish, and two silver communion-cups--all new. And toone side of this, in a new wainscoted desk, waited worthy Mr. Barton forthe coming of his squire--a happy man that day; his face beamed in thespring sunlight; he had on his silk gown, and he eyed, openly, the doorthrough which his new patron was to come.
* * * * *
Then, without sound or warning, except for the footsteps on thepaving-stones and the sudden darkening of the sunshine on the floor,there came the figure for which all looked. As he entered he lifted hishand to his head, but dropped it again; and passed on, sturdy, and (youwould have said) honest and resolute too, to his seat behind thereading-desk. He was met by silence; he was escorted by silence; and insilence he sat down.
Then the waiting crowd surged in, poured this way and that, and flowedinto the benches. And Mr. Barton's voice was raised in holy exhortation.
"At what time soever a sinner doth repent him of his sin from the bottomof his heart, I will put all his wickedness out of remembrance, with theLord."
III
Those who could best observe (for the tale was handed on with thecareful accuracy of those who cannot read or write) professed themselvesamazed at the assured ease of the squire. No sound came from the seathalf-hidden behind the reading-desk where he sat alone; and, during theprayers when he stood or kneeled, he moved as if he understood wellenough what he was at. A great bound Prayer-Book, it was known, restedbefore him on the book-board, and he was observed to turn the pages morethan once.
It was, indeed, a heavy task that Mr. Barton had to do. For first therewas the morning prayer, with its psalms, its lessons and its prayers;next the Litany, and last the communion, in the course of which wasdelivered one of the homilies set forth by authority, especiallydesigned for the support of those who were no preachers--preceded andfollowed by a psalm. But all was easy to-day to a man who had such causefor exultation; his voice boomed heartily out; his face radiated hispleasure; and he delivered his homily when the time came, with excellentemphasis and power--all from the reading-desk, except the communion.
Yet it is to be doubted whether the attention of those that heard himwas where their pastor would have desired it to be; since even to thesecountry-folk the drama of the whole was evident. There, seen full whenhe sat down, and in part when he kneeled and stood, was the man whohitherto had stood to them for the old order, the old faith, the oldtradition--the man whose horse's footsteps had been heard, times andagain, before dawn, in the village street, bearing him to the mystery ofthe mass; through whose gate strangers had ridden, perhaps three or fourtimes in the year, to find harbourage--strangers dressed indeed as plaingentlemen or yeomen, yet known, every one of them, to be under herGrace's ban, and to ride in peril of liberty if not of life.
Yet here he sat--a man feared and even loved by some--the first of hisline to yield to circumstance, and to make peace with his times. Not aman of all wh
o looked on him believed him certainly to be that which hisactions professed him to be; some doubted, especially those whothemselves inclined to the old ways or secretly followed them; and thehearts of these grew sick as they watched.
But the crown and climax was yet to come.
* * * * *
The minister finished at last the homily--it was one which inveighedmore than once against the popish superstitions; and he had chosen itfor that reason, to clench the bargain, so to say--all in due order; forhe was a careful man and observed his instructions, unlike some of hisbrethren who did as they pleased; and came back again to the long northside of the linen-covered table to finish the service.
He had no man to help him; so he was forced to do it all for himself; sohe went forward gallantly, first reading a set of Scripture sentenceswhile the officers collected first for the poor-box, and then, as it wasone of the offering-days, collected again the dues for the curate. Itwas largely upon these, in such poor parishes as was this, that theminister depended and his wife.
Then he went on to pray for the whole estate of Christ's Church militanthere on earth, especially for God's "servant, Elizabeth our Queen, thatunder her we may be godly and quietly governed"; then came theexhortation, urging any who might think himself to be "a blasphemer ofGod, an hinderer or slanderer of His Word ... or to be in malice orenvy," to bewail his sins, and "not to come to this holy table, lestafter the taking of that holy sacrament, the devil enter into him, as heentered into Judas, and fill him full of all iniquities."
So forward with the rest. He read the Comfortable Words; the Englishequivalent for Sursum Corda with the Easter Preface; then anotherprayer; and finally rehearsed the story of the Institution of the MostHoly Sacrament, though without any blessing of the bread and wine, atleast by any action, since none such was ordered in the new Prayer-Book.Then he immediately received the bread and wine himself, and stood upagain, holding the silver plate in his hand for an instant, beforeproceeding to the squire's seat to give him the communion. Meantime, sogreat was the expectation and interest that it was not until theminister had moved from the table that the first communicants began tocome up to the two white-hung benches, left empty till now, next to thetable.
* * * * *
Then those who still watched, and who spread the tale about afterwards,saw that the squire did not move from his seat to kneel down. He had putoff his hat again after the homily, and had so sat ever since; and nowthat the minister came to him, still there he sat.
Now such a manner of receiving was not unknown; yet it was the sign of aPuritan; and, so far from the folk expecting such behaviour in theirsquire, they had looked rather for Popish gestures, knockings on thebreast, signs of the cross.
For a moment the minister stood before the seat, as if doubtful what todo. He held the plate in his left hand and a fragment of bread in hisfingers. Then, as he began the words he had to say, one thing at leastthe people saw, and that was that a great flush dyed the old man's face,though he sat quiet. Then, as the minister held out the bread, thesquire seemed to recover himself; he put out his fingers quickly, tookthe bread sharply and put it into his mouth; and so sat again, until theminister brought the cup; and this, too, he drank of quickly, and gaveit back.
Then, as the communicants, one by one, took the bread and wine and wentback to their seats, man after man glanced up at the squire.
But the squire sat there, motionless and upright, like a figure cut ofstone.
IV
The court of the manor seemed deserted half an hour before dinner-time.There was a Sabbath stillness in the air to-day, sweetened, as it were,by the bubbling of bird-music in the pleasaunce behind the hall and thehigh woods beyond. On the strips of rough turf before the gate andwithin it bloomed the spring flowers, white and blue. A hound laystretched in the sunshine on the hall steps; twitching his ears to keepoff a persistent fly. You would have sworn that his was the onlyintelligence in the place. Yet at the sound of the iron latch of thegate and the squire's footsteps on the stones, the place, so to say,became alive, though in a furtive and secret manner. Over the half doorof the stable entrance on the left two faces appeared--one, which wasDick's, sullen and angry, the other, that of a stable-boy, inquiring andfrankly interested. This second vanished again as the squire cameforward. A figure of a kitchen-boy, in a white apron, showed in the darkdoorway that led to the kitchen and hall, and disappeared againinstantly. From two or three upper windows faces peeped and remainedfascinated. Only the old hound remained still, twitching his ears.
All this--though there was nothing to be seen but the familiar personageof the place, in his hat and cloak and sword, walking through his owncourt on his way to dinner, as he had walked a thousand times before.And yet so great was the significance of his coming to-day, that thevery gate behind him was pushed open by sightseers, who had followed ata safe distance up the path from the church; half a dozen stood therestaring, and behind them, at intervals, a score more, spread out ingroups, all the way down to the porter's lodge.
The most remarkable feature of all was the silence. Not a voice therespoke, even in a whisper. The maids at the windows above, Dick gloweringover the half door, the little group which, far back in the kitchenentrance, peeped and rustled, the men at the gate behind, even the boysin the path--all these held their tongues for interest and a kind offear. Drama was in the air--the tragedy of seeing the squire come backfrom church for the first time, bearing himself as he always did,resolute and sturdy, yet changed in his significance after a fashion ofwhich none of these simple hearts had ever dreamed.
So, again in silence, he went up the court, knowing that eyes were uponhim, yet showing no sign that he knew it; he went up the steps with thesame assured air, and disappeared into the hall.
* * * * *
Then the spell broke up and the bustle began, for it was only half anhour to dinner and guests were coming. First Dick came out, slashing tothe door behind him, and strode out to the gate. He was still in hisboots, for he had ridden to Padley and back since early morning with acouple of the maids and the stable-boy. He went to the gate of thecourt, the group dissolving as he came, and shut it in their faces. Anoise of talking came out of the kitchen windows and the clash of asaucepan: the maids' heads vanished from the upper windows.
Even as Dick shut the gate he heard the sound of horses' hoofs down bythe porter's lodge. The justices were coming--the two whose names he hadheard with amazement last week, as the last corroboration of theincredible rumour of his master's defection. For these were a couple ofmagistrates--harmless men, indeed, as regarded their hostility to theold Faith--yet Protestants who had sat more than once on the bench inDerby to hear cases of recusancy. Old Mrs. Marpleden had told him theywere to come, and that provision must be made for their horses--Mrs.Marpleden, the ancient housekeeper of the manor, who had gone to schoolfor a while with the Benedictine nuns of Derby in King Henry's days. Shehad shaken her head and eyed him, and then had suffered three or fourtears to fall down her old cheeks.
Well, they were coming, so Dick must open the gate again, and pull thebell for the servants; and this he did, and waited, hat in hand.
Up the little straight road they came, with a servant or two behindthem--the two harmless gentlemen, chattering as they rode; and Dickloathed them in his heart.
"The squire is within?"
"Yes, sir."
They dismounted, and Dick held their stirrups.
"He has been to church--eh?"
Dick made no answer. He feigned to be busy with one of the saddles.
The magistrate glanced at him sharply.
V
It was a strange dinner that day.
Outwardly, again, all was as usual--as it might have been on any otherSunday in spring. The three gentlemen sat at the high table, facing downthe hall; and, since there was no reading, and since it was a festival,there was no lack of conversation. The servants
came in as usual withthe dishes--there was roast lamb to-day, according to old usage, amongthe rest; and three or four wines. A little fire burned against thereredos, for cheerfulness rather than warmth, and the spring sunshineflowed in through the clear-glass windows, bright and genial.
Yet the difference was profound. Certainly there was no talk, overheardat least by the servants, which might not have been on any Sunday forthe last twenty years: the congratulations and good wishes, or whateverthey were, must have been spoken between the three in the parlour beforedinner; and they spoke now of harmless usual things--news of thecountryside and tales from Derby; gossip of affairs of State; of herGrace, who, in a manner unthinkable, even by now dominated theimagination of England. None of these three had ever seen her; thesquire had been to London but once in his life, his two guests never.Yet they talked of her, of her state-craft, of her romanticism; theytold little tales, one to the other, as if she lived in the county town.All this, then, was harmless enough. Religion was not mentioned in thehearing of the servants, neither the old nor the new; they talked, allthree of them, and the squire loudest of all, though with pauses ofpregnant silence, of such things as children might have heard withoutdismay.
Yet to the servants who came and went, it was as if their master wereanother man altogether, and his hall some unknown place. There was noblessing of himself before meat; he said something, indeed, before hesat down, but it was unintelligible, and he made no movement with hishand. But it was deeper than this ... and his men who had served him forten or fifteen years looked on him as upon a stranger or a changeling.