The Dark and the Light

by Josephine Bell

  Katharine winced at this homely view. But she agreed that the couple had not come together until two years ago, that being three years after the marriage.

  ‘Then they were seventeen and sixteen,’ said Celia, counting on her fingers, ‘and are now nineteen and eighteen. And I suppose from such unfortunate beginnings there is little love between them. Or you would not have a story to tell me,’ she added, with her usual good sense, that always brought down her sister-in-law’s self-importance.

  It was Katharine’s turn to frown at the spoiling of a good malicious tale. But she made the best of it, though it meant a coarsening of her manner.

  ‘Love!’ she cried. ‘No love at all, for the lady swears he is incapable. No matter how she gives him encouragement, how she helps him, he cannot be roused even to give her satisfaction, far less achieve his own. For these two years she hath striven to conceal the true cause of her apparent barrenness, taking the blame to herself. But now her patience hath come to an end, her misery is too great—’

  ‘And her affections, never having been engaged, are now bestowed elsewhere?’ Celia asked, refusing to be shocked by what she had heard.

  Katharine smiled but said nothing.

  ‘And how comes my Lord Rochester into this story?’ Celia went on. ‘Nay, there is no need to speak. I see it in your face. My Lady Essex loves him and he would return her affection were it not for the King and for the bar the Earl presents to an honourable marriage.’

  ‘Which bar,’ said Katharine softly, ‘it is now the lady’s dearest wish to have annulled.’

  Celia caught her breath, nodded, looked about the room as if afraid some third person had listened to this monstrous declaration. This firm intention, she saw by the look on Katharine’s face. Which told her, as she already feared, that her sister was deep in the confidence of a scheming woman. Great lady she might be, certainly unfortunate, perhaps innocently wronged, if her story of impotence was true. But was it? From Katharine’s manner of relating it, Celia already suspected that come what might, the Lady Essex would prove her case. The truth would not, of necessity, be a part of it.

  A little frightened, seeing the very serious look on Celia’s face, that she had said more than she should, Katharine hastened to explain that this was all conjecture, that my Lady Frances did not repeat the tale of her grief abroad to all who would listen, but the rumours of it could not fail to penetrate such a close circle as his Majesty’s Court. Gossip always spread and grew as it spread. It was even whispered that my Lord Essex boasted to his own cronies of his general success with women. Thus suggesting that he knew full well how his deficiency was regarded.

  After this long conversation neither Celia nor Katharine in their own exchanges made any further allusion to the subject of it. But on account of her fear that his sister might become so far involved in those matters in high places that this carried a risk to the followers of the great ones concerned Celia did at last confide in her husband. If only Francis would attempt to control her. If only Katharine—

  ‘Vain hopes,’ said Richard. ‘We must keep our counsel and let no one know how much we have been told.’

  ‘Then you will not inform Francis?’

  ‘I most certainly will not. And I forbid you to attempt it. I will not add one tittle to his unhappiness. Besides, this vile Court is not our business. I will have nought to do with the stirrings of that ordure.’

  Impressed by Richard’s angry emphasis, but not cowed by it, Celia obeyed him. She entertained and provided for the Leslies until, at the beginning of October, Sir Francis left Oxford to establish his family for the autumn and winter in London. As he himself told Richard, he would return from time to time to give courses of lectures, coach scholars, see to the progress being made in the building of his new house. But he had a duty, he said, to his father’s cousin, the alderman and also to his wife’s parents. Doctor Ogilvy senior was growing old and began to show it, though he still persevered with his teaching of the young. Moreover it was time that Katharine began to settle into a domestic life with her children. Now that her connection with the Court was severed he hoped he would be able to persuade her into fresh courses more suitable to her real station in life. He hoped God would bless him with further increase in the way of children. Having seen how little trouble it was to Celia to breed freely and how much joy her offspring gave her, how blessedly free from illness they seemed, he could only trust and pray that Kate might do likewise.

  Richard added his prayers to these pious thoughts but in his own mind he doubted Francis would be successful. His eyes were not dimmed by his sister’s beauty, nor his wits confused by the charm of her gay, innocent-seeming chatter.

  In this he was wiser than his brother-in-law. Katharine’s ambition might be directed to shallow ends, but her pursuit of it ran deep and swift as a river between narrow confining walls. There was now nothing she would not sacrifice to gain those ends. As for children, she had done her duty in making amends and had clearly no wish to waste her time and risk losing her position by bearing more of these burdens. She had learned enough at Court to secure means of preventing or discarding such handicaps.

  At Oxford, with the Leslies gone, the Ogilvy household sank back into peace and pleasant living. Doctor Richard Ogilvy was rising in his profession. He might soon acquire a chair, to become a professor with the dignity, fame and emoluments of that position. His voice was always strong for advance, for consideration of the new ideas that swept about the courts and halls, the chapels, the libraries, the common rooms of the senior men, the lodgings of the vociferous young, who made more noise with their untutored, ignorant speculations than any of the groups of their elders.

  For Oxford, as often before, was in a state of ferment very much to be expected at that time. King James himself early in his reign, had understood this and encouraged it. His prolonged visit in 1605 was still clearly and gratefully remembered. James had attended meetings of scholars, called to present learned papers upon a great variety of subjects. He had taken part. He had displayed his remarkable erudition and his knowledge of languages. Though many found his Scottish pronunciation of Latin, Greek and Hebrew both barbarous and obscure, they kept their heads and their manners. Probably the monarch was too pleased with his own performance to notice any reluctance to applaud on the part of his audience.

  All in all the visit had been an outstanding success. His Majesty felt he had established himself as the equal of the greatest minds in the realm, while the scholars were relieved to find they had an educated lord who no doubt would show his sympathy for their aims and labours with suitable patronage, material as well as in the spirit.

  They calculated without a proper knowledge of the King’s penury, his wild extravagance, his appalling debts, poor Robert Cecil’s unceasing, but never successful efforts to curb fresh outpourings. Six years after that early visit the university’s pecuniary desires, indeed their just and urgent needs, were still unrelieved. Moreover, as Doctor Ogilvy stressed in various common room meetings with the other younger professors and lecturers, they already had need to expand and no means to do so.

  ‘Prosperity comes to many in these days of peace from war,’ he explained. ‘More particularly in the towns where merchants grow rich from the great increases in their trade. At last we are at peace with Spain and look to continue so. This means the employment of more strong, lively, ingenious souls within our own boundaries, more goods to carry to distant lands, more to be enjoyed at home. But prosperity doth not come to us, for what do we offer except instruction to those others, the younger generation, and discussion among ourselves in the pursuit of knowledge.’

  ‘By our reading of those ancient books now made available and by the exercise of those faculties of reason and imagination vouchsafed to us by the Almighty,’ suggested a colleague.

  ‘Not forgetting,’ added a third, ‘those suggestions of genius coming from the eminent Sir Francis Bacon in that somewhat neglected masterpiece of his, The Advancement of
Learning.’

  ‘Aye,’ Richard answered. ‘That we should observe the actual facts relevant to our inquiries and arguments, rather than imagine causes to fit our speculations. A fine humbling suggestion, but who hath taken it up? He directs us to Galileo, but do the mathematicians or the naturalists follow his advice?’

  ‘To what end would they follow it?’ inquired a lecturer in law. ‘I have enough a-do to beat some knowledge of our common law into the heads of my slovenly youngsters to put them in the way of practising in the courts. Your prosperous merchants, Master Ogilvy, put their sons to school these days instead of employing them about their yards and warehouses and workshops. There is a new swarm of these eager young scholars seeking position for themselves quite as much as knowledge for its own sake. No longer are we concerned with those sons of the higher ranks who have no aptitude or inclination for war, but desire chiefly to enter the church or the paths of learning.’

  ‘You are right,’ said the man who had already referred to Bacon and now did so again. ‘Sir Francis Bacon considers the great increase of late in the number of grammar schools to be regretted. He considers that this will mean, and he is right in his conclusion, the creation of too many ‘‘idle clerks’’ as he calls them, ‘‘for whom there will be an insufficient number of jobs.’’ Is he not right? Do we not see that this is already happening and like to grow worse?’

  ‘Which brings us back to our present dire need,’ Richard said, ‘for proper salaries to attract able men as readers in the learned professions and sciences and to fill those chairs now occupied by dotards. And to create new chairs to fill our needs.’

  ‘Take heed how you speak of dotards, Master Ogilvy,’ one of his friends warned him when the others moved away. ‘It is those same greybeards must present the university case in high places. Besides, remember that Sir Francis Bacon, whom you so much admire, has little authority even now, and had none at all under the late Queen, though she sometimes employed him in writing out her conclusions and sometimes listened to his advice, but never took it.’

  ‘He is, however,’ Richard reminded his friend, ‘a cousin of the Earl of Salisbury and my lord, careful small man, still keeps a hold of the royal purse strings.’

  ‘Why ‘‘our Jamie’’ as Francis Leslie likes to call him, cuts holes in the bottom of the purse.’

  They both laughed, but not for long. The position at the university was serious. Not only were they short of funds for a very necessary expansion but they were threatened by that same hunger for money that afflicted the monarch. They had no defence against the King, who unceasingly bent his mind to ways and means whereby he could satisfy his insatiable need; merciless, even illegal means in terms not only of natural justice but of the common law of the realm.

  Chapter Three

  Alderman Angus Leslie owned a large and comfortable house in Gracious Street, in the City of London, situated in the eastern part and running from north to south beyond the Exchange. It lay conveniently near to the Pool of London below London Bridge, where the great ships anchored to discharge their merchandise.

  Alderman Leslie’s warehouses stood near to the Billings Gate, his interest being very largely concerned with frozen and dried fish taken in the northern waters off Scotland and along the eastern coasts of England; also with oysters from Essex and soles and other flat fish from the shallow waters about the Goodwin Sands near Dover.

  The City of London had enjoyed growing prosperity from the early days of the present reign. King James prided himself upon his gift of peace to the people of his new kingdom, though it was built more upon his uncertainty in foreign affairs, his frequent change of direction and his imprecise, confused promises in all directions, than upon any clear, sustained policy. Nevertheless England was not at war, nor had been openly so since the peace treaty with Spain in the year after the accession. Trade improved, at first cautiously, later at a greatly increased pace and capacity. The merchants of London took full advantage of their opportunities.

  And with them Alderman Leslie. At first this state of affairs had been greeted with thanksgiving and gratitude. But as time went by prosperity began to be taken as a matter of course, the pattern of trade hardened, so that any unforeseen circumstance, any threat of change, far from being welcomed, was deeply resented. Not only resented, but resisted.

  Sir Francis Leslie, with his family, had not been long settled again in his Cousin Angus’s house before Francis became aware of this changed situation, which before he had ignored, in his concern for the affairs of the university.

  ‘We have passed from doubt to anxiety, from unease to a positive fear,’ the alderman told him.

  ‘Why so, sir?’ Francis asked. ‘Why so particularly?’

  ‘From the failure of the Great Contract that my Lord Salisbury devised to secure to his Majesty a fixed and most generous income upon most reasonable terms.’

  ‘So I have heard,’ Francis answered. ‘We are not at Oxford altogether ignorant of events of State. We saw the excellent promise of this Contract and grieved at its failure to please the King, for we looked to a just share to fill the most urgent needs of the university together with those of his Majesty.’

  ‘You would have hoped in vain even had our Jamie agreed to the terms. But instead he raged against his loyal Commons. He fought for his full Prerogative and hath dissolved the Parliament. The King is penniless and so deep in debt I see no hope of ever drawing him out of it.’

  ‘I hear my Lord Salisbury is made Treasurer. Can he do nought?’

  Master Leslie groaned aloud.

  ‘He will mulct us all. There is a new device, a tax in truth, but neither properly regulated nor agreed. Merely laid down with the threat of the Privy Council, the Star Chamber, behind it. Gifts, he calls them. Demands, rather. Of sums that range from ten to fifty pounds, called Privy Seals.’

  Francis looked grave.

  ‘A tax laid by the authority of Parliament would be resented but accepted. But this is an imposition, upheld, I suppose, by force?’

  ‘I fear me so. It breeds nothing but ill will and confusion.’

  ‘While at the same time the monopolies go forward, do they not? Duty on goods both going out and coming in, instead of swelling the coffers of the State and paying the debts of the King, too, I would hope, instead disappear into the private chests of those to whom his Majesty hath presented them.’

  ‘You are right,’ the alderman said. ‘Poor Cecil. Poor loyal, hard-working, faithful little man.’

  Francis was surprised.

  ‘You speak of him with great sympathy. But I am told he is much detested, both for his disregard of suffering and his amazing self aggrandizement.’

  ‘The successful are always detested for it,’ his kinsman reminded him. ‘As for suffering he hath enough of his own. It is believed his personal health, quite apart from his deformity, is far from good. He works too hard.’

  ‘Because he keeps too much in his own hands?’

  ‘May be. But he hath worn himself out in his service to the Crown and got little thanks for it, even if he hath gathered great wealth by the way.’

  The general anxiety in the City, as Francis heard and sympathized with it, did not in any way disturb his wife. Her anxieties lay in quite another direction, the chief of them being her wish to resume her visits to the Carr brothers, while at the same time giving no hint of this to anyone at Alderman Leslie’s house.

  She and her family were established there in the two rooms they had occupied when she was first married, with the addition of a third room for the children and their nurse. The housekeeper Mistress Butters was quite unchanged Katharine found, rather to her annoyance, for she had hoped for some ageing, some slackening of wit and energy, in that direction. She found that if anything Mistress Butters was more strict, more watchful, more careful with her staff than four years previously. The maid she allotted to attend on Lady Leslie was new to her, middle-aged, very quiet, but was as watchful as the housekeeper. A spy, Kathari
ne decided, raging inwardly.

  But her chief source of annoyance lay with Mistress Butters’s daughter, Lucy. The girl who had been used to play with young Francis, to spoil the dangerous imp, cosset him, steal his affection, take his part against herself, was now a grown woman, with a face of delicate but decided loveliness. That she had no right to, setting herself up beyond her station. Or rather appearing to do so, she conceded, when Francis taxed her with her behaviour to Mistress Lucy.

  ‘You have no business to slight her, madam,’ he remarked one day. They had met her coming from the garden on one of the rare occasions they were going out into it together. He himself had bowed in answer to her curtsey and had given a greeting, but Katharine had merely nodded and passed on.

  ‘She gives herself airs she hath no right to,’ she answered coldly.

  ‘She hath every right, being the daughter of a gentleman and therefore of equal rank, as is her mother, with thyself and myself and Master Leslie, too.’

  ‘Have it so if it please you. A pretty face is always a winning argument.’

  ‘As to that,’ Francis told her, ‘you have a master’s, or I had better say, a mistress’s knowledge.’

  She turned her head away, swept right about in furious affront and so back into the house. Francis at once regretted his bitter impulse to wound, but failed to understand its cause. He had not seen much of Lucy since he had brought his family back to the house in Gracious Street. He imagined she was busy with the help she gave her mother and with her friends, who must be many. Kate had called her pretty. It was a kind of insult, he considered, for Lucy was far more than pretty. She was beautiful.

  Walking alone up and down the neat garden paths Francis asked himself how it was possible the girl had not yet been sought in marriage. Her mother had no portion to bestow on her, but her father had been Angus Leslie’s friend and the alderman was of a most generous disposition.