Come Rack, Come Rope

by Robert Hugh Benson

  Robin saw her against the light as soon as he came in. She was still in her blue riding-dress, with the hood on her shoulders, and held her whip in her hand; but he could see no more of her head than the paleness of her face and the gleam on her black hair.

  “Well, then?” she whispered sharply; and then: “Why, what a state you are in!”

  “It’s nothing,” said Robin. “I rolled in a bog-hole.”

  She looked at him anxiously.

  “You are not hurt? … Sit down at least.”

  He sat down stiffly, and she beside him, still watching to see if he were the worse for his falling. He took her hand in his.

  “I am not fit to touch you,” he said.

  “Tell me the news; tell me quickly.”

  So he told her; of the wrangle in the parlour and what had passed between his father and him; of his own bitterness; and his letter, and the way in which the old man had taken it.

  “He has not spoken to me since,” he said, “except in public before the servants. Both nights after supper he has sat silent and I beside him.”

  “And you have not spoken to him?” she asked quickly.

  “I said something to him after supper on Sunday, and he made no answer. He has done all his writing himself. I think it is for him to speak now. I should only anger him more if I tried it again.”

  She sighed suddenly and swiftly, but said nothing. Her hand lay passive in his, but her face was turned now to the bright southerly window, and he could see her puzzled eyes and her down-turned, serious mouth. She was thinking with all her wits, and, plainly, could come to no conclusion.

  She turned to him again.

  “And you told him plainly that you and I … that you and I——”

  “That you and I loved one another? I told him plainly. And it was his contempt that angered me.”

  She sighed again.

  It was a troublesome situation in which these two children found themselves. Here was the father of one of them that knew, yet not the parents of the other, who should know first of all. Neither was there any promise of secrecy and no hope of obtaining it. If she should not tell her parents, then if the old man told them, deception would be charged against her; and if she should tell them, perhaps he would not have done so, and so all be brought to light too soon and without cause. And besides all this there were the other matters, heavy enough before, yet far more heavy now—matters of their hopes for the future, the complications with regard to the Religion, what Robin should do, what he should not do.

  So they sat there silent, she thinking and he waiting upon her thought.

  She sighed again and turned to him her troubled eyes.

  “My Robin,” she said, “I have been thinking so much about you, and I have feared sometimes——”

  She stopped herself, and he looked for her to finish. She drew her hand away and stood up.

  “Oh! it is miserable!” she cried. “And all might have been so happy.”

  The tears suddenly filled her eyes so that they shone like flowers in dew.

  He stood up, too, and put his muddy arm about her shoulders.

  “It will be happy,” he said. “What have you been fearing?”

  She shook her head and the tears ran down.

  “I cannot tell you yet.… Robin, what a holy man that travelling priest must be, who said Mass on Sunday.”

  The lad was bewildered at her swift changes of thought, for he did not yet see the chain on which they hung. He strove to follow her.

  “It seemed so to me too,” he said. “I think I have never seen——”

  “It seemed so to you too,” she cried. “Why, what do you know of him?”

  He was amazed at her vehemence. She had drawn herself clear of his arm and was looking at him full in the face.

  “I met him on the moor,” he said. “I had some talk with him. I got his blessing.”

  “You got his blessing! Why, so did I, after the Mass, when you were gone.”

  “Then that should join us more closely than ever,” he said.

  “In Heaven, perhaps, but on earth——” She checked herself again. “Tell me what you thought of him, Robin.”

  “I thought it was strange that such a man as that should live such a rough life. If he were in the seminary now, safe at Douay——”

  She seemed a shade paler, but her eyes did not flicker.

  “Yes,” she said. “And you thought——?”

  “I thought that it was not that kind of man who should fare so hardly. If it were a man like John Merton, who is accustomed to such things, or a man like me——”

  Again he stopped; he did not know why. But it was as if she had cried out, though she neither spoke nor moved.

  “You thought that, did you, Robin?” she said presently, never moving her eyes from his face. “I thought so, too.”

  “But I do not know why we are talking about Mr. Simpson,” said the lad. “There are other affairs more pressing.”

  “I am not sure,” said she.

  “Marjorie, my love, what are you thinking about?”

  She had turned her eyes and was looking out through the little window. Outside the red sunlight still lay on the crags and slopes beyond the deep valley beneath them, and her face was bright in the reflected brightness. Yet he thought he had never seen her look so serious. She turned her eyes back to him as he spoke.

  “I am thinking of a great many things,” she said. “I am thinking of the Faith and of sorrow and of love.”

  “My love, what do you mean?”

  Suddenly she made a swift movement towards him and took him by the lapels. He could see her face close beneath his, yet it was in shadow again, and he could make out of it no more than the shadows of mouth and eyes.

  “Robin,” she said, “I cannot tell you unless God tells you Himself. I am told that I am too scrupulous sometimes.… I do not know what I think, nor what is right, nor what are fancies.… But … but I know that I love you with all my heart … and … and that I cannot bear——”

  Then her face was on his breast in a passion of weeping, and his arms were round her, and his lips on her hair.

  IV

  Dick found his master a poor travelling companion as they rode home. He made a few respectful remarks as to the sport of the day, but he was answered by a wandering eye and a complete lack of enthusiasm. Mr. Robin rode loosely and heavily. Three or four times his mare stumbled (and no wonder, after all that she had gone through), and he jerked her savagely.

  Then Dick tried another tack and began to speak of the company, but with no greater success. He discoursed on the riding of Mrs. Fenton, and the peregrine of Mr. Thomas, who had distinguished herself that day, and he was met by a lacklustre eye once more.

  Finally he began to speak of the religious gossip of the countryside—how it was said that another priest, a Mr. Nelson, had been taken in London, as Mr. Maine had been in Cornwall; that, it was said again, priests would have to look to their lives in future, and not only to their liberty; how the priest, Mr. Simpson, was said to be a native of Yorkshire, and how he was ridden northwards again, still with Mr. Ludlam. And here he met with a little more encouragement. Mr. Robin asked where was Mr. Simpson gone to, and Dick told him he did not know, but that he would be back again by Easter, it was thought, or, if not, another priest would be in the district. Then he began to gossip of Mr. Ludlam; how a man had told him that his cousin’s wife thought that Mr. Ludlam was to go abroad to be made priest himself, and that perhaps Mr. Garlick would go too.

  “That is the kind of priest we want, sir,” said Dick.

  “Eh?”

  “That is the kind of priest we want, sir,” repeated Dick solemnly. “We should do better with natives than foreigners. We want priests who know the county and the ways of the people—and men too, I think, sir, who can ride and know something of sport, and can talk of it. I told Mr. Simpson, sir, of the sport we were to have to-day, and he seemed to care nothing about it!”

&n
bsp; Robin sighed aloud.

  “I suppose so,” he said.

  “Mr. John looked well, sir,” pursued Dick, and proceeded to speak at length of the FitzHerbert troubles, and the iniquities of the Queen’s Grace. He was a shrewd man in his way, with the simplicity which belongs to such shrewdness; he disliked the new ways which he experienced chiefly in the towns, and put them down, not wholly without justice, to the change of which religion formed an integral part; he hated the beggars and would gladly have gone to see one flogged; and he disliked the ministers and their sermons and their “prophesyings” with all the healthy ardour of prejudice. Once in the year did Dick approach the sacraments, and a great business he made of it, being unusually morose before them and almost indecently boisterous after them. He was feudal to the very heart of him; and it was his feudality that made him faithful to his religion as well as to his masters, for either of which he would resolutely have died. And what in the world he would do when he discovered, at Easter, that the objects of his fidelity were to take opposite courses, Robin could not conceive.

  As they rode in at last, Robin, who had fallen silent again after Dick’s last piece of respectful vehemence, suddenly beat his own leg with his whip and uttered an inaudible word. It seemed to Dick that the young master had perceived clearly that which plainly had been worrying him all the way home, and that he did not like it.

  CHAPTER V

  I

  MR. MANNERS sat in his parlour ten days after the beginning of Lent, full of perplexing thoughts. He had eaten well and heartily after his week of spare diet, and then, while in high humour with all the world, first his wife and then his daughter had laid before him such revelations that all the pleasure of digestion was gone. It was but three minutes ago that Marjorie had fled from him in a torrent of tears, for which he could not see himself responsible, since he had done nothing but make the exclamations and comments that should be expected of a father in such a case.

  The following were the points for his reflection—to begin with those that touched him less closely.

  First that his friend Mr. Audrey, whom he had always looked upon with reverence and a kind of terror because of his hotness in matters of politics and religion, had capitulated to the enemy and was to go to church at Easter. Mr. Manners himself had something of timidity in his nature: he was conservative certainly, and practised, when he could without bringing himself into open trouble, the old religion in which he had been brought up. He, like the younger generation, had been educated at Derby Grammar School, and in his youth had sat with his parents in the nave of the old Cluniac church of St. James to hear Mass. He had then entered his father’s office in Derby, about the time that the Religious Houses had fallen, and had transferred the scene of his worship to St. Peter’s. At Queen Mary’s accession, he had stood, with mild but genuine enthusiasm, in his lawyer’s gown, in the train of the sheriff who proclaimed her in Derby marketplace; and stood in the crowd, with corresponding dismay, six years later to shout for Queen Elizabeth. Since that date, for the first eleven years he had gone, as did other Catholics, to his parish church secretly, thankful that there was no doubt as to the priesthood of his parson, to hear the English prayers; and then, to do him justice, though he heard with something resembling consternation the decision from Rome that compromise must cease and that, henceforth, all true Catholics must withdraw themselves from the national worship, he had obeyed without even a serious moment of consideration. He had always feared that it might be so, understanding that delay in the decision was only caused by the hope that even now the breach might not be final or complete; and so was better prepared for the blow when it came. Since that time he had heard Mass when he could, and occasionally even harboured priests, urged thereto by his wife and daughter; and, for the rest, still went into Derby for three or four days a week to carry on his lawyer’s business, with Mr. Biddell his partner, and had the reputation of a sound and careful man without bigotry or passion.

  It was, then, a shock to his love of peace and serenity, to hear that yet another Catholic house had fallen, and that Mr. Audrey, one of his clients, could no longer be reckoned as one of his co-religionists.

  The next point for his reflection was that Robin was refusing to follow his father’s example; the third, that somebody must harbour the boy over Easter, and that, in his daughter’s violently expressed opinion, and with his wife’s consent, he, Thomas Manners, was the proper person to do it. Last, that it was plain that there was something between his daughter and this boy, though what that was he had been unable to understand. Marjorie had flown suddenly from the room just as he was beginning to put his questions.

  It is no wonder, then, that his peace of mind was gone. Not only were large principles once more threatened—considerations of religion and loyalty, but also those small and intimate principles which, so far more than great ones, agitate the mind of the individual. He did not wish to lose a client; yet neither did he wish to be unfriendly to a young confessor for the faith. Still less did he wish to lose his daughter, above all to a young man whose prospects seemed to be vanishing.

  About half an hour later the door opened once more and Marjorie came in again.

  She was in her fine dress to-day—fine, that is, according to the exigencies of the time and place, though sober enough if for a town-house—in a good blue silk, rather dark, with a little ruff, with lace ruffles at her wrists, and a quilted petticoat, and silver buckles. For she was a gentleman’s daughter, quite clearly, and not a yeoman’s, and she must dress to her station. Her face was very pale and quite steady. She stood opposite her father.

  “Father,” she said, “I am very sorry for having behaved like a goose. You were quite right to ask those questions, and I have come back to answer them.”

  He looked at her timidly and yet with an attempt at severity. He knew what was due from him as a father. But for the present he had forgotten what questions they were; his mind had been circling so wildly.

  “You are right to come back,” he said, “you should not have left me so.”

  “I am very sorry,” she said again.

  “Well, then—you tell me that Mr. Robin has nowhere else to go.”

  She flushed a little.

  “He has ten places to go to. He has plenty of friends. But none have the right that we have. He is a neighbour; it was to me, first of all, that he told the trouble.”

  Then he remembered.

  “Sit down,” he said. “I must understand much better first. I do not understand why he came to you first. Why not, if he must come to this house at all—why not to me? I like the lad; he knows that well enough.”

  He spoke with an admirable dignity, and began to feel more happy in consequence.

  She had sat down as he told her, on the other side of the table; but he could not see her face.

  “It would have been better if he had, perhaps,” she said. “But——”

  “Yes? What ‘But’ is that?”

  Then she faced him, and her eyes were swimming.

  “Father, he told me first because he loves me, and because I love him.”

  He sat up. This was speaking outright what she had only hinted at before. She must have been gathering her resolution to say this, while she had been gone. Perhaps she had been with her mother. In that case he must be cautious.…

  “You mean——”

  “I mean just what I say. We love one another, and I am willing to be his wife if he desires it—and with your permission. But——”

  He waited for her to go on.

  “Another ‘But’!” he said presently, though with increasing mildness.

  “I do not think he will desire it after a while. And … and I do not know what I wish. I am torn in two.”

  “But you are willing?”

  “I pray for it every night,” she cried piteously. “And every morning I pray that it may not be so.”

  She was staring at him as if in agony, utterly unlike what he had looked for in her. He w
as completely bewildered.

  “I do not understand one word——”

  Then she threw herself at his knees and seized his hands; her face was all torn with pain.

  “And I cannot explain one word.… Father, I am in misery. You must pray for me and have patience with me.… I must wait … I must wait and see what God wishes.”

  “Now, now …”

  “Father, you will trust me, will you not?”

  “Listen to me. You must tell me this. Do you love this boy?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “And you have told him so? He asked you, I mean?”

  “Yes.”

  He put her hands firmly from his knee.

  “Then you must marry him, if matters can be arranged. It is what I should wish. But I do not know——”

  “Father, you do not understand—you do not understand. I tell you I am willing enough, if he wishes it … if he wishes it.”

  Again she seized his hands and held them. And again bewilderment came down on him like a cloud.

  “Father! you must trust me. I am willing to do everything that I ought.” (She was speaking firmly and confidently now.) “If he wishes to marry me, I will marry him. I love him dearly.… But you must say nothing to him, not one word. My mother agrees with this. She would have told you herself; but I said that I would—that I must be brave.… I must learn to be brave.… I can tell you no more.”