"I dared not show them to you the last time you were here," he said, "and there was no need; but now there must be no delay. I have lately made some more, too. Now here is one," he said, stopping before the great carved mantelpiece in the hall.
He looked round to see that no servant was in the room, and then, standing on a settee before the fire, touched something above, and a circular hole large enough for a man to clamber through appeared in the midst of the tracery.
"There," he said, "and you will find some cured ham and a candle, with a few dates within, should you ever have need to step up there--which, pray G.o.d, you may not."
"What is the secret?" asked Anthony, as the tracery swung back into place, and his host stepped down.
"Pull the third roebuck"s ears in the coat of arms, or rather push them.
It closes with a spring, and is provided with a bolt. But I do not recommend that refuge unless it is necessary. In winter it is too hot, for the chimney pa.s.ses behind it; and in summer it is too oppressive, for there is not too much air."
At the end of the corridor that led in the direction of the little old rooms where Anthony had slept in his visit, Mr. Buxton stopped before the portrait of a kindly-looking old gentleman that hung on the wall.
"Now there is an upright old man you would say; and indeed he was, for he was my own uncle, and made a G.o.dly end of it last year. But now see what a liar I have made of him!"
Mr. Buxton put his hand behind the frame, and the whole picture opened like a door showing a s.p.a.ce within where three or four could stand.
Anthony stepped inside and his friend followed him, and after showing him some clothes hanging against the wall closed the picture after them, leaving them in the dark.
"Now see what a sharp-eyed old fellow he is too," whispered his host.
Anthony looked where he was guided, and perceived two pinholes through which he could see the whole length of the corridor.
"Through the centre of each eye," whispered his friend. "Is he not shrewd and secret? And now turn this way."
Anthony turned round and saw the opposite wall slowly opening; and in a moment more he stepped out and found himself in the lobby outside the little room where he had made the exercises six years ago. He heard a door close softly as he looked about him in astonishment, and on turning round saw only an innocent-looking set of shelves with a couple of books and a little pile of paper and packet of quills upon them.
"There," said Mr. Buxton, "who would suspect Tacitus his history and Juvenal his satires of guarding the pa.s.sage of a Christian ecclesiastic fleeing for his life?"
Then he showed him the secret, how one shelf had to be drawn out steadily, and the nail in another pressed simultaneously, and how then the entire set of shelves swung open.
Then they went back and he showed him the spring behind the frame of the picture.
"You see the advantage of this," he went on: "on the one side you may flee upstairs, a treasonable skulking ca.s.socked jack-priest with the lords and the commons and the Queen"s Majesty barking at your heels; and on the other side you may saunter down the gallery without your beard and in a murrey doublet, a friend of Mr. Buxton"s, taking the air and wondering what the devil all the clamouring be about."
Then he took him downstairs again and showed him finally the escape of which he was most proud--the entrance, designed in the cellar-staircase, to an underground pa.s.sage from the cellars, which led, he told him, across to the garden-house beyond the lime-avenue.
"That is the pride of my heart," he said, "and maybe will be useful some day; though I pray not. Ah! her Grace and her honest Council are right.
We Papists are a crafty and deceitful folk, Father Anthony."
The four grew very intimate during those few weeks; they had many memories and a.s.sociations in common on which to build up friendship, and the aid of a common faith and a common peril with which to cement it. The gracious beauty of the house and the life at Stanfield, too, gilded it all with a very charming romance. They were all astonished at the easy intimacy with which they behaved, one to another.
Mary Corbet was obliged to return to her duties at Court at the beginning of September; and she had something of an ache at her heart as the time drew on; for she had fallen once more seriously in love with Isabel. She said a word of it to Mr. Buxton. They were walking in the lime-avenue together after dinner on the last day of Mary"s visit.
"You have a good chaplain," she said; "what an honest lad he is! and how serious and recollected! Please G.o.d he at least may escape their claws!"
"It is often so," said Mr. Buxton, "with those wholesome out-of-door boys; they grow up into such simple men of G.o.d."
"And Isabel!" said Mary, rustling round upon him as she walked. "What a great dame she is become! I used to lie on her bed and kick my heels and laugh at her; but now I would like to say my prayers to her. She is somewhat like our Lady herself, so grave and serious, and yet so warm and tender."
Mr. Buxton nodded sharply.
"I felt sure you would feel it," he said.
"Ah! but I knew her when she was just a child; so simple that I loved to startle her. But now--but now--those two ladies have done wonders with her. She has all the splendour of Mary Maxwell, and all the softness of Margaret."
"Yes," said the other meditatively; "the two ladies have done it--or, the grace of G.o.d."
Mary looked at him sideways and her lips twitched a little.
"Yes--or the grace of G.o.d, as you say."
The two laughed into each other"s eyes, for they understood one another well. Presently Mary went on:
"When you and I fence together at table, she does not turn frigid like so many holy folk--or peevish and bewildered like stupid folk--but she just looks at us, and laughs far down in those deep grey eyes of hers. Oh! I love her!" ended Mary.
They walked in silence a minute or two.
"And I think I do," said Mr. Buxton softly.
"Eh?" exclaimed Mary, "you do what?" She had quite forgotten her last sentence.
"It is no matter," he said yet more softly; and would say no more.
Presently the talk fell on the Maxwells; and came round to Hubert.
"They say he would be a favourite at Court," said Mary, "had he not a wife. But her Grace likes not married men. She looked kindly upon him at Deptford, I know; and I have seen him at Greenwich. You know, of course, about Isabel?"
Mr. Buxton shook his head.
"Why, it was common talk that they would have been man and wife years ago, had not the fool apostatised."
Her companion questioned her further, and soon had the whole story out of her. "But I am thankful," ended Mary, "that it has so ended."
The next day she went back to Court; and it was with real grief that the three watched her wonderful plumed riding-hat trot along behind the top of the churchyard wall, with her woman beside her, and her little liveried troop of men following at a distance.
The days pa.s.sed by, bringing strange tidings to Stanfield. News continued to reach the Catholics of the good confessions witnessed here and there in England by priests and laity. At the end of July, three priests, Garlick, Ludlam and Sympson, had been executed at Derby, and at the end of August the defeat of the Armada seemed to encourage Elizabeth yet further, and Mr. Leigh, a priest, with four laymen and Mistress Margaret Ward, died for their religion at Tyburn.
By the end of September the news of the hopeless defeat and disappearance of the Armada had by now been certified over and over again. Terrible stories had come in during August of that northward flight of all that was left of the fleet over the plunging North Sea up into the stormy coast of Scotland; then rumours began of the miseries that were falling on the Spaniards off Ireland--Catholic Ireland from which they had hoped so much. There was scarcely a bay or a cape along the west coast where some ship had not put in, with piteous entreaties for water and aid--and scarcely a bay or a cape that was not blood-guilty. Along the straight coast from Sligo Bay westwards, down the west coast, Clew Bay, Connemara, and haunted Dingle itself, where the Catholic religion under arms had been so grievously chastened eight years ago--everywhere half-drowned or half-starved Spaniards, piteously entreating, were stripped and put to the sword either by the Irish savages or the English gentlemen. The church-bells were rung in Stanfield and in every English village, and the flame of national pride and loyalty burned fiercer and higher than ever.
On the last day of September Isabel, just before dinner in her room, heard the trot of a couple of horses coming up the short drive, and on going downstairs almost ran against Hubert as he came from the corridor into the hall, as the servant ushered him in.
The two stopped and looked at one another in silence.
Hubert was flushed with hard riding and looked excited; Isabel"s face showed nothing but pleasure and surprise. The servant too stopped, hesitating.
Then Isabel put out her hand, smiling; and her voice was natural and controlled.