Read Ebook: For the Master's Sake: A Story of the Days of Queen Mary by Holt Emily Sarah Petherick Horace Illustrator

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Ebook has 490 lines and 26303 words, and 10 pages

"Good heart! what labour it shall save!" cried lazy Dorothy--who did assist in the more delicate parts of the household washing, but shirked as much of it as she could.

"Ay, and set you off, belike, Mistress Doll," added the complimentary Friar. "As for us, poor followers of Saint Francis, no linen alloweth us our Rule, so that little of the new matter is like to come our way. They of Saint Dominic shall cheapen well the same , I reckon," he added, with a contemptuous curl of his lip, intended for the rival Order.

"But lo' you, there is another wonder abroad, as I do hear tell," remarked Mistress Winter, "and 'tis certain matter the which, being taken--Agnes, thou dolt! what hast done wi' the salad?--being taken hendily off the top of ale when 'tis a-making, shall raise bread all-to as well as sour dough. I know not what folk call it.--Thou idle, gaping dizzard ! and I have to ask thee yet again what is come of aught, it shall be with mine hand about thine ears! Find a spoon this minute!"

"Pray you, good Father, to eat of this salad," entreated his hostess. "I had it of one of my Lord of Ely his gardeners; and there is therein the new endive, and the Italian parsley, that be no common matter."

That the Cordelier was by no means indifferent to the good things of this life might be seen in his face, as he drew the wooden salad bowl a little nearer.

"Have you beheld the strange bird that Mistress Flint hath had sent to her over seas?" inquired he. "I do hear that great lords and ladies have kept such like these fifty years or so; but never saw I one thereof aforetime. 'Tis bright yellow of plumage, and singeth all one as a lark: they do call his name canary."

"Nay, forsooth, I never see aught that should do me a pleasure!" said Mistress Winter crustily. "Gossip Flint might have told me so much.-- Take that, thou lither hussy! I'll learn thee to let fall the knives!"

And on the ear of the unfortunate Agnes, as she was stooping to recover the dropped knife, came Mistress Winter's hand, with sufficient heaviness to make her grow white and totter ere she could recover her balance.

Father Dan took no notice. He could not have afforded to quarrel with Mistress Winter, especially now when priests of the old style were at a discount; and in his eyes such creatures as Agnes were made to be beaten and abused. He merely saw in his hostess a notable housewife, and in Agnes a kind of animated machine, with just soul enough to be kept to the duty of confession, and require a careless absolution, three times in the year. Such people had no business, in Father Dan's eyes, to have thoughts or feelings of any sort. They were sent into the world to mop and cook and serve their betters. Of course, when the animated machines did take to thinking for themselves, and to showing that they had done so, the Cordelier regarded it as most awkward and inconvenient--a piece of insubordinate presumption that must be stamped out at once, and not suffered to infect others.

After further conversation in the same style, being unable to go on eating and drinking for ever, Father Dan rose to depart. It was not confession-time, and on all other occasions Father Dan's pastoral visits came very much under the head of revelling. There was not a syllable of religious conversation; that was considered peculiar to the confessional.

Mistress Winter and Dorothy, after a little needlework and some more scolding of Agnes, tramped upstairs to bed; and Joan, coming in half an hour later, excessively cross after her day's pleasuring, followed the example. Having put away the supper things, and laid every thing in readiness for the morrow's work. Agnes stood for a moment before she too lay down on her hard pallet in the one chamber above that served all four as bedroom. Through the uncurtained window high up in the room the June stars looked down upon her. She had no notion of prayer, except telling beads to Latin Paters and Aves; but the instinct of the awakened spirit rose in something like it.

"God, Thou lovest me!" she said in her heart. He was there, somewhere beyond those stars. He would know what she was thinking. "I know but little of Thee; I desire to know more. Thou, who lovest me, tell some one to teach me!"

It would have astonished her to be told that such unuttered longings for the knowledge of God could be of the nature of prayer. Brought up in intense formalism, it never occurred to her that it was possible to pray without an image, a crucifix, or a pair of beads. She crept to her poor straw pallet, and lay down. But the latest thought in her heart, ere she dropped asleep, was, "God loves me; God will take care of me, and teach me." She would have been startled to hear that this was faith. Faith, to her, meant relying on the priest, and obeying the Church. But was there no whisper--unheard even by herself--

"O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt?"

Note 1. This, I am sorry to say, was a lady without a head. It probably indicated the residence of an old bachelor.

Note 2. The barb was a plaiting of white linen, which was fastened at the chin, and entirely covered the neck.

Note 3. Sack appears to have been a general name for white wine, especially the sweeter kinds.

MAKING PROGRESS.

"I care not how lone in this world I may be, So long as the Master remembereth me."

"So sure as our sweet Lady, Saint Mary, worketh miracles at Walsingham, never was poor woman so be-plagued as I, with an ill, ne'er-do-well, good-for-nought, thankless hussy, picked up out of the mire in the gutter! Where be thy wits, thou gadabout? Didst leave them at the Cross yester-morrow? Go thither and seek for them! for ne'er a barley crust shalt thou break this even in this house, or my name is not Martha Winter!"

And, snatching up a broom, Mistress Winter hunted Agnes out of doors, and slammed the door behind her.

It was not altogether a new thing for Agnes to be turned out into the street for the night, and Mistress Winter reserved it as her most tremendous penalty. Perhaps, had she known how Agnes regarded it, she might have invented a new one. These occasions were her times of recreation, when she usually took refuge with good-natured Mistress Flint, who was always ready to give Agnes a supper and a share of her girls' bed. A few hours in the cheerful company of the Flints was a real refreshment to the hard-worked and ever-abused drudge. But this time she did not at once seek Mistress Flint. She walked, as Mistress Winter had amiably suggested, straight to the now deserted Cross, and sat down on one of its stone steps. It would not be dark yet for another hour, and until the gathering dusk warned her to return, Agnes meant to stay there. She was feeling very sad and perplexed. The glory in which the world had been steeped only yesterday had grown pale and grey. The cares of the world had come in. Poor Agnes had set out that morning with a firm determination to serve God throughout the day. Her idea of service consisted in the ceaseless mental repetition of forms of prayer. Busy with her Aves and Paternosters, she had forgotten to shut the oven door, and a baking of bread had been spoiled. She sat now mournfully wondering how any one in her position could serve God. If such mischances as this were always to happen, she could never get through her work. And the work must be done. Mistress Winter was one of the last people in the world to permit religion to take precedence of housewifery. How then was poor Agnes ever to "make her salvation" at all?

The mistake was natural enough. All her life she had walked in the mist of self-righteousness; her teachers had carefully led her into it. Starting from the idea that man had to merit God's favour, was it any wonder that, when told that God loved her already, she still fancied that, in order to retain that love, she must do something to deserve it? The new piece was sewn on the old garment, and the rent was made worse.

But now, must she give up the glad thought of being loved? If serving God, as she understood that service, made her neglect her every-day duties, what then? How was she ever to serve God? It was a misfortune for Agnes that she had heard only half of the Friar's sermon. The other half would have removed her difficulties.

She had reached this point in her perplexed thoughts, when she was startled by a voice inquiring--

"What aileth thee, my daughter?"

Agnes looked up, and beheld the same dark shining eyes which had flashed down upon her from the Cross yesterday morning.

"I scantly can tell," she said, speaking out her thoughts. "It seemeth not worth the while."

"What seemeth thus?" asked the Friar.

"Living," said the girl quietly. There was no bitterness in her tone, hardly even weariness; it was simply hopeless.

The Friar remained silent for a moment, and Agnes spoke again.

"Father," she faltered, in a low, shy voice, "I heard you preach here yester-morrow."

"I brought thee glad tidings," was the significant answer.

The tears sprang to her eyes. "O Father!" she said, "I thought them so glad--that God loved me, and would have me for to love Him; but now 'tis all to no good. I cannot serve God."

"What letteth?"

"That I am in the world, and must needs there abide."

"What for no? Serve God in the world."

"Good Father, if you did but know, you should not say the same!" said Agnes in the same hopeless tone in which she had spoken before.

"If I knew but what?"

In answer, Agnes told him her simple story; unavoidably revealing in it the hardships of her lot. "You must needs see, good Father," she concluded, "that I cannot serve God and do Mistress Winter's bidding."

"I see no such a thing, good daughter," replied the Friar. "Dost think the serving of God to lie in the saying of Paternosters? It is thine heart that He would have. Put thine heart in thy labour, and give Him both together."

"But how so, Father?" inquired Agnes in an astonished tone. "I pray you tell me how I shall give to God the baking of bread?"

"Who giveth thee thy daily bread?"

"That, no doubt, our Lord doth."

"O Father, if I could do that thing!"

Never before, nor in so short a time, had so many new ideas been suggested to the mind of Agnes Stone. The very notion of Christ's sympathy with men was something strange to her. She had been taught to regard Mary as the tender human sympathiser, and to look upon Christ in one of two lights--either as the helpless Infant in the arms of the mother, or as the stern Judge who required to be softened by Mary's merciful intercession. But the one gush of confidence over, she was doubly shy. She shrank from clothing her vague thoughts with precise and distinct language.

"I would I might alway confess unto you, Father," she said gratefully, rising from her hard seat "I would have thee confess unto a better than I, my daughter," was the priest's answer. "There is no confessor like to the great Confessor of God. Christ shall make never a blunder; and He beareth no tales. Thine innermost heart's secrets be as safe with Him as with thyself."

"But must I not confess to a priest?" demanded Agnes in a surprised tone.

"There is one Priest, my daughter," said the Friar. "And `because He continueth ever, unchangeable hath He the priesthood.' There can be none other."

This was another new idea to Agnes--if possible, more strange than the former. She ventured a faint protest which showed the nature of her thoughts.

"But He, that is the Judge at the doomsday! how could such as I e'er confess to Him?"

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