Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/206

 198 “Yes, they are diligent in their pleasures. Do they catch any fish, Polly?”

“Her Grace knows that they do; and so does your reverence. There were trout of their catching, in the spring, in every house they entered. What other sport they may have, each neighbour guesses for himself. But see! they are not listening to the sermon; they are hastening away by the wood. The horseman is mounted, and off at a canter. The people are running over the meadow. What can be the matter?”

“Only the constables, probably. Let me look. Yes; it is so. Your preaching friend will have to go to prison,—as he deserves; and those who have listened to him will be fined. I doubt whether the people have gained much in liberty by the change of religions; and they have lost everything else for it. Wherever Queen Bess travels, she has her road cleared of sour religionists, as she has of deformed and leprous persons. Our Queen-mistress here is less impatient with such people than their own Protestant sovereign. She bore with their serenades of untunable psalms, under her windows at Holyrood, when the cathedral music of France was still sounding in her ears. But the Protestant Queen has all psalm-singers and image-breakers swept out of her path, as if they were so many papists. The Catholics in exile, or in hiding, and the Anabaptists in prison, and the Puritans under her royal displeasure, and put to flight in the meadows like sheep before strange dogs,—such is the religious liberty of England, when fallen away from Rome!”

“And she hates the foreign Protestants, it is said, while there are so few that she likes at home. She says the Netherlanders have corrupted her people, who were a sober people before, but have now learned to swill like Flemish hogs.”

“The tone of English manners is low indeed,” said the priest, “with a bastard sovereign on the throne, and the true Queen in prison; with the true priests in exile, and a bastard clergy in the pulpits, and wild heresy infesting the very woods and hills, and the broad meadows of the land. But a few days more, and we shall see better times.”

“I wish Sampson would come home!” sighed Polly.

“He waits only to bring the news. Be patient, my child, for the sake of what he will bring. And now that yonder meadow is clear, go and see whether there are letters for the Queen.”

Polly had for some days known the secret of the Queen’s post-office,—the place in the terrace wall which a good climber could reach from below, by means of a hidden cord, and staples carefully inserted. There were no letters, though the Queen was singularly impatient for them. Time after time that day Polly was sent to look; and still there were none. Two persons below were equally eager to deposit something there. Felton and Stansbury had been to visit the Wise Man, on the dispersion of Dr. Pantlin’s congregation, to warn him of danger. The general restlessness and alarm of the neighbourhood wanted an object; and such an object was always found in the nearest reputed witch or sorcerer. The Devil’s priest, and his retreat in the wood, had been in everybody’s thoughts that day, after the warnings from both pulpits about the Devil’s work that was going on in those parts. If there was hatred loudly expressed towards the dangerous woman up at the Castle, there was no less fear of the wizard in the forest. The good-natured gentlemen had put the Wise Man on his guard; and he, for his part, bade them beware of desperate perils hanging over their idol Princess, and all who worshipped her. Stansbury jested with him about his being no conjurer, for this time. He had seldom made so bad a guess; and Felton had hurried his indiscreet comrade away. The Wise Man stood looking after them till they were out of sight among the trees. Then he turned into his house with a sigh, saying to himself that it was not for him to admit trouble of mind about the turns of human fate: but he had not got over the weakness of mourning over the waste of such men as these. He should never see them more; and he dreaded what he might hear of them. He proceeded to gather up his papers, and his medicines, and his books, and to deposit them in a certain cupboard he had made long before in a hollow tree in the depth of the wood. Then he spread his board, and fed the fire, so that there was every appearance of his intending to return to the next meal; he dressed himself like a traveller, strapped his tabor and pipes on his shoulder, and started as an itinerant musician in the opposite direction from Tutbury. Comrades must be on the look-out for him on the Lichfield road; and they would set the people dancing in all the villages till the times should be more settled, and philosophers might be safe in their retreats again.

The next day the October sun rose clear; and the mellow sunshine rested on the variegated foliage of Needwood Forest, and made the meadows as green as May, and the waters of the Dove as clear as the morning air. Before Mary had left her bed, her ladies brought her what she longed for. It was but one letter; but it promised more. Polly had found it at dawn where at sunset there was nothing.

There was a radiant joy to-day in the face which had seemed more beautiful in its melancholy than any other: yet now it was plain that joy became it best. Her appetite at breakfast rejoiced her ladies; and her enjoyment of the sunshine on the terrace cheered her industrious needleman at his work, as her figure passed and repassed his window. As Polly stood aside at the stairfoot, with a low obeisance, her royal mistress stopped to whisper some words with a smile. She told Polly that somebody was coming to-day, and she had better look out for him from a certain window which commanded the road. With the light step of girlhood, she paced the gardens, and returned to the terrace, and then to the gardens again; and there she found the Earl,—all unconscious, as she supposed, of what was in her heart. He had indeed not heard, though the tidings were on the way, that at any moment now, Mary might have set forth to London, to take possession of the throne. The Pope’s bull, excommunicating Elizabeth, had arrived; and so probably had the French fleet for which Mary’s