The struggle was sharp, but short. On the tenth of July, Lady Jane made her queenly entry into the Tower, in antic.i.p.ation of that coronation which was never to be hers in this world; and on the twentieth, her nine days' reign was over, and Mary was universally acknowledged Queen of England. The first important prisoner made was the Duke of Northumberland, hurled down just as he touched the glittering prize to the winning of which he had given his life; the second was Bishop Ridley. Events followed each other with startling rapidity. The Lady Elizabeth, with her customary sagacity, kept quiet in the background until the succession of her sister was a.s.sured, and then came openly to London to meet the Queen. Peers were sent to the Tower in a long procession. Bonner was restored to the See of London, Gardiner sworn of the Council, Norfolk and Tunstal released from prison. The Queen made her triumphal entry into her metropolis, and the new order of things was secured beyond a doubt.

Business was very brisk, for some weeks afterwards, with the carver and gilder at the bottom of Hosier Lane. Quant.i.ties of idols, thrown six years before to the moles and to the bats, were now searched for, mended, cleaned, regilt, and set up in elevated niches. Every house showed at least one, except where those few dwelt who counted not their lives dear unto them for the Master's sake. Henry Marvell went to the expense of a new Virgin, which he set up on high in his kitchen; but Cicely did not put her hand to the accursed thing, and quietly ignored its existence. Christie, as usual, made himself generally disagreeable, by low reverences to the image in the presence of his mother, and making faces at it in that of his father--a state of things which lasted until he was well beaten by the latter, after which occurrence he reserved his grimaces for other company.

Mistress Flint was entirely indifferent to the question; but since every body else was setting up an idol, she followed in the crowd. If Mr Flint cared, he kept his own counsel. Little d.i.c.kon clapped his hands at the pretty colours and bright gilding; and Will innocently asked, "Mother, wherefore had we ne'er Saint Christopher aforetime?"

"Come now, be a good lad, and run to Gossip Hickman for a candle!" was his mother's convincing answer.

But this is antic.i.p.ating, and we must retrace our steps to that sixth Sunday for which Agnes was waiting in patient hope. Very anxiously she watched to see whether, when dinner was over, she would be despatched to Aldgate or Bermondsey. But it happened at last as she desired; there was nowhere to send her. Mistress Winter, in her usual considerate style of language, gave Agnes to understand that she had no wish to see her again before dark; and, clad in the old patched serge which was her Sunday dress, the poor drudge crept timidly into Saint Paul's Cathedral.

From the Lady Chapel, soft and low, came the chant of the Virgin's Litany. The fashionable people, in rich attire, were promenading up and down the aisle known as "Paul's Walk." In the side chapels a few worshippers lingered before the shrines; and round a lectern, in one corner of the nave, were gathered a little knot of men and women, waiting there in the almost forlorn hope that some priest, more zealous than the rest, might come up and read to them. They could not now expect any layman to have the courage to do so. Agnes joined this group.

"I mis...o...b.. there'll be no reading this day," said a grey-headed man.

"Ne'er a priest in Paul's careth to do the same," responded a forlorn-looking woman. "They be an idle set of wine-bibbers, every man Jack of them."

"Hush thee, Goody!" whispered a second woman, giving a friendly push to the first. "Keep a civil tongue in thine head, prithee, as whatso thy thoughts be."

"Thoughts make no noise," said the old man, smiling grimly.

All at once there was a little stir among the group, as the tall, gaunt figure of the Black Friar was seen climbing the steps of the desk.

"Brethren!" said the voice which Agnes so well remembered, "let us read together the word of G.o.d."

And, beginning just where he had opened the book, he read to them the story of the raising of Lazarus. He gave no word of comment till he reached the end; then he shut the book and spoke to them.

"Brethren!" said the ringing voice, "this day is come Christ unto you, that He may awake you out of sleep. And if ye have not heretofore heard His voice, your sleep, like Lazarus, is that of very death. Now, O ye dead, hear the voice of the Son of G.o.d, and live. No man cometh unto the Father but by Him. Ye must come at G.o.d neither by ma.s.s, nor by penance, nor by confessing, nor by alms-giving, but alonely by Christ.

And him that cometh will Christ in nowise cast out. No thief will He turn away; no murderer shall hear that he hath overmuch sinned for pardon; no poor soul shall be denied the unsearchable riches; no weary heart shall seek for rest and find none. Yea, He is become Christ--that is, G.o.d and man together--for this very thing, that He might give unto every one of you that will have them, His pardon and His peace. Come ye, every one of you, this day, and put this Christ unto the test."

Without another word the Black Friar descended from the desk, and pa.s.sed along the nave to the western door with long, rapid strides. And Agnes went home with her heart full.

Full--with what strange and new thoughts! No ma.s.ses, no penances, no confessions, no alms-givings, to be the means of reconciliation with G.o.d; but only Christ. And was it possible that the Friar meant one other thing which, he had not said--no intercession of saints? If Christ were so ready to receive and bless all who would come--if He were Himself the Mediator for man with G.o.d--could He need a mediator in His turn?

Yet if not, thought Agnes with a feeling of sudden terror as the supposition came to her, what became of the intercession of Mary? She who was held up as the Lady of Sorrows--just as Isis, and Cybele, and Hertha had been before her, but of that Agnes knew nothing--she who was pictured by the Church as the fountain of mercy and compa.s.sion--the maiden who could sympathise with the griefs of womanhood, the mother who had influence with, yea, authority over, the divine Son--what place did Friar Laurence find for her in his teaching? The mere imagination of a religion without Mary, was like the thought of chaos. Hitherto she had been the motive-power of all piety to Agnes Stone. A sermon without our Lady! It was shocking even to think of it.

Had Agnes been in the regular habit of attendance at Saint Paul's Cross, she would have heard many such sermons during the reign of Edward the Sixth. But Mistress Winter's disapprobation, combined with her own indifference, had been enough to keep her away, and the half-discourse of John Laurence at the Cross had been the only sermon she remembered to have heard during the five years of her residence with that delectable dame. Many thoughts, therefore, now familiar to the church-going public, were quite new to her.

If she could but once again come across Friar Laurence!

CHAPTER FIVE.

AGNES IS ASKED A QUESTION.

"Whate'er I say, whate'er I syng, Whate'er I do, that hart shall se, That I shall serue with hart lovyng That lovyng hart that lovyth me."

Few things are more touching in their way than the fragment of paper containing the poem from which the motto to this chapter is a quotation.

Among the dusty business ma.n.u.scripts of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury, in the oldest division, relating to the affairs of the Priory of Christ Church, were found by the Historical Commission two songs, scribbled on sc.r.a.ps of paper. One was a love-song of the common type, such as, allowing for difference of diction, might be had in any second-rate music-shop of the present day. But the other was of a very different and far higher order. It was the cry of the immured bird which has been forced from its nest in the greenwood, and for which life has no other attraction than to sit mournfully at the door of the cage, looking out to the fair fields, and the blue sky in which it shall stretch its wings no more. None but G.o.d will ever know the name or the story of that poor heart-weary monk, torn from all that he loved on earth, who thus "pressed his soul on paper," one hundred years before the dissolution of the monasteries. We can only hope that through the superinc.u.mbent wood, hay, stubble, he dug down to the one Foundation and was safe: that through the dead words of the Latin services he heard the Living Voice calling to all the weary and heavy-laden, and that he too came and found rest.

But to turn to our story.

The days rolled slowly on, undistinguishable from one another save by the practical divisions of baking-day, washing-day, brewing-day, and so forth; and, certainly, not distinguished by any increase of comfort in the outward surroundings of Agnes's lot. She was trying to do her work heartily, as to the Lord; but it did seem to her that the harder she tried, the harder Mistress Winter was to please; the crosser was Joan, the more satirical was Dorothy. The only sunshine of her life was on those precious Sunday afternoons, when always the tall gaunt figure might be seen ascending the desk in the nave of Saint Paul's, and, after the reading from Scripture, came a few pithy, fervent words, which Agnes treasured up as very gems. But by-and-by, another gleam of sunlight began to creep into her life.

It was again Sunday afternoon, and the reading in Saint Paul's was over for that day. But it was too soon to go back to the bosom of that uncongenial household which Agnes called home; for Mistress Winter was generally extra cross--and the ordinary exhibition was enough without the extra--if Agnes presented herself before she was expected. The now deserted steps of the Cross were the only place where she could sit; and accordingly she took refuge there. Not many minutes were over, when she recognised the dark figure of Friar Laurence pa.s.sing through the churchyard with his usual rapid step. All at once a thought seemed to strike him. He paused, turned, and came straight up to the place where Agnes was seated.

"And how is it with thee, my daughter?" he demanded.

"Well, Father; and I thank you," said she. "Verily, touching outward things, as aforetime; but touching the inward, methinks the good Lord learneth me somewhat."

"Be thou an apt scholar," said he.

Agnes grew desperate, and resolved to plunge into the matter. She was afraid lest he should leave her, with one of his usual rapid movements, before she had got to know what she wanted.

"Father!" she said hastily, crimsoning as she spoke, "pray you, give me leave to demand a thing of you."

"Ask thy will, my daughter."

"Pray you, tell me of your grace, wherefore in your goodly discourses you make at all no mention of our Lady?"

The Friar sat down on the steps, when he was asked that question.

"What wouldst thou have me for to say of her?"

"Nay, Father!" returned Agnes, humbly. "You be a learned priest, and I but an ignorant maiden; but having alway heard them that did preach sermons to make much of our Lady, methought I would fain wit, an' I might ask it at you, wherefore you make thus little."

"My child!" answered the Friar quietly, "who died on the rood for thee?"

"Jesus Christ our Lord," responded Agnes readily.

"What! not Saint Mary?"

"Certes, nay, Father, as methinks."

"And who is it that pleadeth with G.o.d for thee?"

"You have told me, Father, our Lord Christ is He. Yet the folk say alway, that our Lady doth entreat our Lord for to hear our prayers."

"Child!" asked the Black Friar, "did Christ die for thee against His will?"

"I would humbly think, not so, Father," answered Agnes meekly, "sith He needed not to have so done at all without it were His good pleasure."

"Right!" was the rejoinder. "It was by reason that G.o.d the Father loved thee, that He gave Christ to die for thee; it was by reason that Christ loved thee, that He bare for thee the pain and shame of the bitter cross. Tell me, is there in this world any that thou lovest?"

Agnes hesitated. It seemed something new and strange to think that she could love, or could be loved, since the death of her mother. But she thought, and said, that she loved little Will Flint.

"Tell me, then," pursued her teacher, "if this little lad were in some sore trouble, and that thou couldst quickly ease him thereof, should he need for to run home and fetch his mother to entreat thee?"

"Surely, nay!" responded Agnes. "I would do the same incontinent [immediately], of mine own compa.s.sion, and the more if he should ask it.