By What Authority? by Robert Hugh Benson (large ebook reader txt) 📖

I should say perhaps; that is, if we are not disturbing you."

Mr. Dent made a polite inclination, and opened the gate for them to go through. Then Mary changed her tactics; and a genial, good-humoured look came over her face; but Isabel, who glanced at her now and again as they went round to the porch at the west-end, still felt uneasy.

As the Rector was unlocking the porch door, Mary surveyed him with a pleased smile.

"Why, you look quite like a priest," she said. "Do your bishops, or whatever you call them, allow that dress? I thought you had done away with it all."

Mr. Dent looked at her, but seeing nothing but geniality and interest in her face, explained elaborately in the porch that he was a Catholic priest, practically; though the word minister was more commonly used; and that it was the old Church still, only cleansed from superstitions. Mary shook her head at him cheerfully, smiling like a happy, puzzled child.

"It is all too difficult for me," she said. "It cannot be the same Church, or why should we poor Catholics be so much abused and persecuted? Besides, what of the Pope?"

Mr. Dent explained that the Pope was one of the superstitions in question.

"Ah! I see you are too sharp for me," said Mary, beaming at him.

Then they entered the church; and Mary began immediately on a running comment.

"How sad that little niche looks," she said. "I suppose Our Lady is in pieces somewhere on a dunghill. Surely, father--I beg your pardon, Mr. Dent--it cannot be the same religion if you have knocked Our Lady to pieces. But then I suppose you would say that she was a superstition, too. And where is the old altar? Is that broken, too? And is that a superstition, too? What a number there must have been! And the holy water, too, I see. But that looks a very nice table up there you have instead. Ah! And I see you read the new prayers from a new desk outside the screen, and not from the priest's stall. Was that a superstition too? And the mass vestments? Has your wife had any of them made up to be useful? The stoles are no good, I fear; but you could make charming stomachers out of the chasubles."

They were walking slowly up the centre aisle now. Mr. Dent had to explain that the vestments had been burnt on the green.

"Ah! yes; I see," she said, "and do you wear a surplice, or do you not like them? I see the chancel roof is all broken--were there angels there once? I suppose so. But how strange to break them all! Unless they are superstitions, too? I thought Protestants believed in them; but I see I was wrong. What do you believe in, Mr. Dent?" she asked, turning large, bright, perplexed eyes upon him for a moment: but she gave him no time to answer.

"Ah!" she cried suddenly, and her voice rang with pain, "there is the altar-stone." And she went down on her knees at the chancel entrance, bending down, it seemed, in an agony of devout sorrow and shame; and kissed with a gentle, lingering reverence the great slab with its five crosses, set in the ground at the destruction of the altar to show there was no sanctity attached to it.

She knelt there a moment or two, her lips moving, and her black eyes cast up at the great east window, cracked and flawed with stones and poles. The Puritan boy and girl looked at her with astonishment; they had not seen this side of her before.

When she rose from her knees, her eyes seemed bright with tears, and her voice was tender.

"Forgive me, Mr. Dent," she said, with a kind of pathetic dignity, putting out a slender be-ringed hand to him, "but--but you know--for I think perhaps you have some sympathy for us poor Catholics--you know what all this means to me."

She went up into the chancel and looked about her in silence.

"This was the piscina, Mistress Corbet," said the Rector.

She nodded her head regretfully, as at some relic of a dead friend; but said nothing. They came out again presently, and turned through the old iron gates into what had been the Maxwell chapel. The centre was occupied by an altar-tomb with Sir Nicholas' parents lying in black stone upon it. Old Sir James held his right gauntlet in his left hand, and with his right hand held the right hand of his wife, which was crossed over to meet it; and the two steady faces gazed upon the disfigured roof. The altar, where a weekly requiem had been said for them, was gone, and the footpace and piscina alone showed where it had stood.

"This was a chantry, of course?" said Mistress Corbet.

The Rector confessed that it had been so.

"Ah!" she said mournfully, "the altar is cast out and the priest gone; but--but--forgive me, sir, the money is here still? But then," she added, "I suppose the money is not a superstition."

When they reached the west entrance again she turned and looked up the aisle again.

"And the Rood!" she said. "Even Christ crucified is gone. Then, in God's name what is left?" And her eyes turned fiercely for a moment on the Rector.

"At least courtesy and Christian kindness is left, madam," he said sternly.

She dropped her eyes and went out; and Isabel and Anthony followed, startled and ashamed. But Mary had recovered herself as she came on to the head of the stone stairs, beside which the stump of the churchyard cross stood; standing there was the same tall, slender woman whose back they had seen through the window, and who now stood eyeing Mary with half-dropped lids. Her face was very white, with hard lines from nose to mouth, and thin, tightly compressed lips. Mary swept her with one look, and then passed on and down the steps, followed by Isabel and Anthony, as the Rector came out, locking the church door again behind him.

As they went up the green, a shrill thin voice began to scold from over the churchyard wall, and they heard the lower, determined voice of the minister answering.

"They are at it again," said Anthony, once more.

"And what do you mean by that, Master Anthony?" said Mistress Corbet, who seemed herself again now.

"She is just a scold," said the lad, "the village-folk hate her."

"You seem not to love her," said Mary, smiling.

"Oh! Mistress Corbet, do you know what she said--" and then he broke off, crimson-faced.

"She is no friend to Catholics, I suppose," said Mary, seeming to notice nothing.

"She is always making mischief," he went on eagerly. "The Rector would be well enough but for her. He is a good fellow, really."

"There, there," said Mary, "and you think me a scold, too, I daresay. Well, you know I cannot bear to see these old churches--well, perhaps I was--" and then she broke off again, and was silent.

The brother and sister presently turned back to the Dower House; and Mary went on, and through the Hall straight into the Italian garden where Mistress Margaret was sitting alone at her embroidery.

"My sister has been called away by the housekeeper," she explained, "but she will be back presently."

Mary sat down and took up the little tawny book that lay by Lady Maxwell's chair, and began to turn it over idly while she talked. The old lady by her seemed to invite confidences.

"I have been to see the church," said Mary. "The Rector showed it to me. What a beautiful place it must have been."

"Ah!" said Mistress Margaret "I only came to live here a few years ago; so I have never known or loved it like my sister or her husband. They can hardly bear to enter it now. You know that Sir Nicholas' father and grandfather are buried in the Maxwell chapel; and it was his father who gave the furniture of the sanctuary, and the images of Our Lady and Saint Christopher that they burned on the green."

"It is terrible," said Mary, a little absently, as she turned the pages of the book.

Mistress Margaret looked up.

"Ah! you have one of my books there," she said. "It is a little collection I made."

Miss Corbet turned to the beginning, but only found a seal with an inscription.

"But this belonged to a nunnery," she said.

"Yes," said Mistress Margaret, tranquilly, "and I am a nun."

Mary looked at her in astonishment.

"But, but," she began.

"Yes, Mistress Corbet; we were dispersed in '38; some entered the other nunneries; and some went to France; but, at last, under circumstances that I need not trouble you with, I came here under spiritual direction, and have observed my obligations ever since."

"And have you always said your offices?" Mary asked astonished.

"Yes, my dear; by the mercy of God I have never failed yet. I tell you this of course because you are one of us, and because you have a faithful heart." Mistress Margaret lifted her great eyes and looked at Mary tenderly and penetratingly.

"And this is one of your books?" she asked.

"Yes, my dear. I was allowed at least to take it away with me. My sister here is very fond of it."

Mary opened it again, and began to turn the pages.

"Is it all in your handwriting, Mistress Torridon?"

"Yes, my child; I continued writing in it ever since I first entered religion in 1534; so you see the handwriting changes a little," and she smiled to herself.

"Oh, but this is charming," cried Mary, intent on the book.

"Read it, my dear, aloud."

Mary read:


"Let me not rest, O Lord, nor have quiet,
But fill my soul with spiritual travail,
To sing and say, O mercy, Jesu sweet;
Thou my protection art in the battail.
Set thou aside all other apparail;
Let me in thee feel all my affiance.
Treasure of treasures, thou dost most avail.
Grant ere I die shrift, pardon, repentance."


Her voice trembled a little and ceased.

"That is from some verses of Dan John Lydgate, I think," said Mistress Margaret.

"Here is another," said Mary in a moment or two.


"Jesu, at thy will, I pray that I may be,
All my heart fulfil with perfect love to thee:
That I have done ill, Jesu forgive thou me:
And suffer me never to spill, Jesu for thy pity."


"The nuns of Hampole gave me that," said Mistress Margaret. "It is by Richard Rolle, the hermit."

"Tell me a little," said Mary Corbet, suddenly laying down the book, "about the nunnery."

"Oh, my dear, that is too much to ask; but how happy we were. All was so still; it used to seem sometimes as if earth were just a dream; and that we walked in Paradise. Sometimes in the Greater Silence, when we had spoken no word nor heard one except in God's praise, it used to seem that if we could but be silent a little longer, and a little more deeply, in our hearts as well, we should hear