"Methinks, no; not if I truly loved him."

"And couldst thou truly love--_me_, Agnes?"

For an instant Agnes gave no answer. She had as little expected to have that question asked her as she had expected to be created a d.u.c.h.ess.

"Say sooth, if thou shouldst be feared," said John Laurence; and the faint suspicion of pain in his tone unloosed her lips at once.

Afraid! Afraid to leave all her dreary past behind her, and to begin a new life, with her cup of gladness full to the very brim? John Laurence was satisfied with his answer. But, for the first time, not one word of reading or comment reached Agnes's mind in an intelligible form.

"May be, my gracious Lady, your good Ladyship should like your palfrey called!" were the words that greeted Agnes when she made her reappearance in Mistress Winter's kitchen, having certainly been more forgetful than usual of the flight of time. "Or, may be, it might please your honourableness to turn your goodly eyes upon the clock, and behold whether it be meet time for a decent maid to come home of a feast-day even? By my troth, I would wager thou hadst been to Westminster and hadst danced a galliardo in the Queen's Grace's hall, did I not know that none with 's eyes in 's head should e'er so much as look on thee. Thou idle doltish gadabout! Dost think I keep thee in board and lodgment and raiment for to go a-gossiping with every idle companion thou mayest meet? Whither hast been, thou dawdlesome patch?

Up to no good, I warrant thee!"

"I have been to Paul's, Mistress, an' it like you," was all that Agnes answered.

"Soothly, it liketh me well, sweeting! Alisting some fat pickpurse friar, with his oily words, belike?"

"I have been a-talking with a friend," said Agnes boldly.

"Marry come up! So my sweet young damosel hath made friends, quotha!

Prithee, was it my Lady's Grace of Suffolk thou wentest forth to see, or my Lady of Norfolk, trow? Did she give thee a ride o' her velvet pillion, bestudded with gold?"

Agnes thought it would be best to get it over. The storm which must come might as well fall soon as late. She stood up, and looked the terrible Mistress Winter in the face.

"Please it you, Mistress Winter, I am handfast to wedlock; and he that shall be mine husband it is that I have talked withal this even."

And having so spoken, Agnes waited quietly for the tempest.

CHAPTER SIX.

THE SHADOW BEFORE.

"Oh for the faith to grasp Heaven's bright For Ever, Amid the shadows of earth's Little While!"

_Jane Crewdson_.

Sheer amazement kept Mistress Winter silent for one moment after Agnes had made her startling revelation. That her bondslave should have dared to dream of freedom was almost too preposterous for belief. And she was powerless to stop this most insubordinate proceeding; for, never antic.i.p.ating such a calamity, and not fond of spending money, except on herself and her daughters, she had not, as she might have done, bound Agnes her apprentice. But after that minute of astonished silence, a thunderstorm such as even Agnes had never before experienced, burst upon her devoted head. If Mistress Winter might be believed, no such instance of rebellion, perversity, ingrat.i.tude, and all imaginable wickedness, had ever before occurred since Adam and Eve quitted Paradise. Agnes was asked to what she expected to come in this life, and where she expected to go after it. When Mistress Winter became weary of scolding, which was not soon, Joan took up the tale, and when she was tired Dorothy succeeded, and as all were gifted with considerable powers of speech, the ball was kept going until bedtime.

Then Agnes was allowed to creep to her coa.r.s.e rug and bundle of straw, feeling herself in peace at last.

Thenceforward there was not much peace left, at least in the day-time.

Having been interrogated as to the name and calling of her suitor, Agnes was at once dubbed Madam Dominic, my Lady's Grace of Blackfriars, and various similar t.i.tles. Dorothy, clasping her hands in mock rapture, falsely averred that she had foreseen this delightful ending to the story, when she caught sight of Agnes and Friar Laurence talking at the Cross; and proceeded to give an ironical description of the Friar's personal charms, sufficiently spiced to be very amusing to her mother and sister, and just sufficiently seasoned with truth to be exceedingly galling to Agnes. Henceforth she took every opportunity to play ill-natured practical jokes on the latter. It was not likely that Agnes would particularly enjoy having shreds of dirty flannel and linen flung into her lap, with a t.i.ttering remark that they would enrich her trousseau; nor feeling, when she sat at needlework, a rotten egg gently broken over her head, with the bland intimation that it was to dress her hair for the wedding; nor the presentation, in solemn form, of torn and faded ribbons, accompanied by the information that they would become her sweetly on her bridal. Of all approach to wedding attire poor Agnes was devoid. She had but two gowns in the world--the washed-out linen bed-gown and stuff petticoat in which her work was generally done, and the well-patched serge which replaced it upon holy days. But Agnes bore all these outrages with a patience born of long practice, and nourished by glad hope. It was now May, and it had been agreed with John Laurence that the twenty-ninth of the following March was to set her free.

They would gladly have made arrangements for an earlier date, had it been possible. But John Laurence was not much richer than Agnes herself, and they had to wait till he thought that he could reasonably afford to marry. Beside this, it was a most perilous time for a priest to think of wedlock. Things might change. Hope told that "flattering tale" which she is so fond of recapitulating to young people--often most unjustifiably. Who could tell what might happen, if they waited?

Meanwhile, what was happening was not particularly cheering, at least to the apprehension of the Gospellers. Wyatt's insurrection had been put down, and its leader beheaded; and its fruitlessness was shown by the setting out of the Queen's envoys to escort Philip to England, while Wyatt yet lay in prison waiting for his trial. The Princess Elizabeth, sent to the Tower in March, on charge of complicity in Wyatt's evil deeds--who will ever know whether it was true?--had been released (at Philip's request, it was said) a few days before Corpus Christi.

Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer lay imprisoned at Oxford, and under sentence of death. Nearly every day somebody was exhibited in the pillory--women as well as men--the most frequent charge being, as it appears in the diary of that comical speller, Mr Henry Machyn--"spekyng yll of good Qwen Mare." The difficulty which presents itself to the present generation is, how else her subjects could well speak of her proceedings. However, they could have held their peace. Probably the discreet portion of the community did so.

It may seem a little strange, on the surface, when one considers how it was that the reign of Mary was felt so galling, that the accession of Elizabeth was welcomed with such a fever of delight and triumph, such a sense of relief and freedom, as was undoubtedly the case--and yet that men bore the former and made no sign, waited for the latter with indescribable longing, but without any attempt to bring it about.

Perhaps we must attribute this partly to that law-abiding instinct inherent in the ordinary Englishman: yet I think still more to the fact that as a rule, at all times, in all respects, the majority of the nation are indifferent. There were men who died at the stake in defence of the free Gospel. There were men who kindled those fires, and stamped out the truth, so far as in them lay. But these, even when put together, were still a minority. The majority were the watchers who stood round the stake, and who cared nothing for the cause on either side--who went to see a martyrdom as a Spaniard goes to see a bull-fight, with neither sympathy nor enmity towards the martyr. Of course, these would be, as to religious profession, what they found it to their own interest that they should be. The most popular and crowded of all the Seven Churches is the Church of Laodicea.

"_Because_ thou art lukewarm... I will spue thee out of My mouth."

It was not without some difficulty that Agnes contrived to enjoy an occasional, and always short, interview with her betrothed. Such interviews were generally followed by forced audiences of Dorothy, who professed an entirely hypocritical interest in the progress of the love-match, and did her best to make Agnes recount what her lover had said to her. Agnes, however, was wise enough to keep out of the trap laid for her, and Dorothy took little by her motion.

Sometimes the lovers met for a few minutes before or after the reading in the Cathedral; sometimes there could be a few words as Agnes carried her pails to and from the Horsepool; once or twice, when Mistress Winter had barred the door on her for misdemeanour, they walked to some quiet nook in the fields near Clerkenwell, refreshing themselves with converse on the one grand subject nearest to both hearts--nearer even than each other. But the readings in the Cathedral were becoming much fewer than of old. It was a perilous thing to do now, and John Laurence was a marked man. Not that he feared danger: his motto was that of the old French knight--"Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra!" But his brother clergy were afraid lest it should be known that such compromising proceedings as regular Scripture lessons were permitted at Saint Paul's.

Some from dislike of the Bible-reading, a few from honest kindly feeling towards the reader, managed to take care that the lectern was otherwise occupied, during the hour which alone John Laurence could usually spare from other duties.

At last King Philip landed in England, and his meeting and marriage with the Queen took place at Winchester. The City and suburbs blazed with bonfires, and rang with bells; the _Te Deum_ was chanted in every church; the utmost delight had to be felt, or at any rate professed, by all who did not wish to be reported as disaffected persons. On the twelfth of August, the royal bride and bridegroom made their state entry into London. A heretic had been burnt at Uxbridge four days previous.

Every house in Cow Lane, imitating every other street in London, poured forth its members to see the procession. The good folks locked their doors, and left their houses to take care of themselves. Agnes, who liked a pretty sight as well as other people, had taken her stand with the crowd, and was looking out with interest as the first of the advancing hors.e.m.e.n who opened the procession became visible, when suddenly she felt a hand upon her own. She looked up into the welcome face of John Laurence.

"Art come to see the sight, John?" she asked with a smile.

"I am come to see two sights," said he, returning it,--but his smiles were always grave. "To wit, the King's and Queen's Graces of the one hand, and Agnes Stone of the other. Hast a mind for a walk toward the Clerks' Well, when all be gone by?"

"With a very good will," she answered.

But the pageant was coming past now, and they exchanged the use of their tongues for that of their eyes. It was entirely equestrian, and came over London Bridge, from Suffolk Place, where the King and Queen had pa.s.sed the night. Our friends were not prepossessed by the royal bridegroom, whose low stature, want of beauty, and gloomy expression, struck them in the same light that they did most Englishmen, as denoting neither grace nor graciousness. Only two persons are recorded ever to have loved Philip--Queen Mary herself, and her successor, the fair and sagacious Elizabeth of France.

Just opposite the place where Agnes and the Friar stood was an allegorical group, of which one painted figure, supposed to be Henry the Eighth, was holding out to the Queen an open Bible, inscribed with the words _Verb.u.m Dei_. But before night a warning had been conveyed to the authorities that the Queen was offended with this representation of her father, and the Bible was painted out so hastily that the hand of the figure was partly obliterated with it.

When the pageant had gone by, and the crowd had sufficiently dispersed, John Laurence and Agnes set out for their walk to Clerkenwell. They found a shady field, in a corner of which they sat down, and the Friar drew from his pocket a Latin Psalter,--the only form of the Bible with which it was then safe to be caught. From this he read to Agnes the hundred and seventh Psalm, translating it as he went on into the only tongue she knew.

"And He led them forth by the right way, that they might go to the City of Habitation."

He paused at that seventh verse, and half closing the book, sat looking thoughtfully into the blue heaven.

Very vaguely did Agnes enter into his deeper thoughts. Her ideas concerning public events, and possible future dangers, were of a very misty description. She kept silent a moment. Then, when he did not speak, she said--

"Well, John?"

"By the right way!" he said dreamily, rather as if speaking to himself than to her. "And He leads them, too, _inportum voluntatis eorum_--to the haven of their desire."

"That is, Heaven?" said Agnes questioningly. Her admiration for his knowledge and wisdom was high.

"That is Heaven," he replied in the same tone as before.

"John, what thinkest Heaven shall be like?"

"Like G.o.d!" said the Black Friar slowly. "Therefore, glorious-- wonderful--perfect in every part--holy--satisfying."

"And right fair and beauteous, doubtless," she added, by way of completing the picture.

"That which is perfect must be fair," said John Laurence. "He saith to His Church, 'Thou art all fair, My love, and a stain is not in thee.'

That is, to thee, and me, Agnes."

"To _me_?" she repeated, in an awe-struck voice. "Nay, how so, trow? I am all o'er a stain with my sins."