Emily Sarah Holt

“ Dost thou marvel if her words be bitter, and if her eyes be sorrowful? Could they be aught else?”
Amphillis looked as horrified as she felt.
“Mistress Perrote, it is dreadful! Can my said Lord Duke be Christian man?”
“Christian!” echoed Perrote, bitterly. “Dear heart, ay! one of the best Catholics alive! Hath he not built churches with the moneys of his mother’s dower, and endowed convents with the wealth whereof he defrauded her? What could man do better? A church is a great matter, and a mother a full little one. Mothers die, but churches and convents endure. ”

“ First, he had been deprived of that glass of Malvoisie—which would probably have been plural rather than singular—and of a conversation with Lord Basset, which might have resulted in something of interest: and life was exceedingly devoid of interest, thought Mr Godfrey, in a pessimistic spirit. He had not discovered that, to a great extent, life is to every man what he chooses to make it; that he who keeps his eyes fixed on street mud need not expect to discover pearls, while he who attentively scans the heavens is not at all unlikely to see stars. ”

“ Agatha indulged in a little explosion of laughter under cover of her handkerchief.
“Oh, Amphillis, where hast thou dwelt all thy life? Thou art the full seliest (simplest, most unconventional) maid ever I did see.”
Amphillis replied literally. “Why, in Hertfordshire was I born, but I dwelt in London town a while ere I came hither.”
“A jolly townswoman must thou have made! Canst not conceive what I mean? Why, the youngest of six brethren hath all his fortune to make, and cannot be no catch at all for a maid, without he be full high of rank, and she have gold enough to serve her turn without.” ”

“ She wished to be close at hand if her services were needed; she had no fancy for Agatha’s rattle; and—she had not asked herself why—she instinctively kept away from the company of Norman Hylton. Amphillis was not one of those girls who wear their hearts upon their sleeves; who exhibit their injuries, bodily or mental, and chatter freely over them to every comer. Her instinct was rather that of the wounded hart, to plunge into the deepest covert, away from every eye but the Omniscient.
Mr and Mrs Altham had pursued their journey without any further communication to Amphillis. ”

“ The Church is men, not God! and God must be above the Church. But what is the Church? Is it this priest or that bishop? Nay, verily; it is the congregation of all the faithful elect that follow Christ, and do after His commandments. So long, therefore, as they do after His commands, and follow Him, they be little like to err. ‘He that believeth in the Son hath everlasting life.’”
“But we all believe in our Lord!” said Amphillis, feeling as if so many new ideas had never entered her head all at once before.
“Believe what?” said Marabel, and she smiled. ”

“ There be tangles of divers sorts, my maid, and those which cut the tightest be not alway the worst. Thou mayest tangle thy feet of soft wool, or rich silk, no less than of rough cord. Ah me! there be tangles here, Amphillis, and hard to undo. There were skilwise fingers to their tying—hard fingers, that thought only to pull them tight, and harried them little touching the trouble of such as should be thus tethered. And there be knots that no man can undo—only God. Why tarry the wheels of His chariot?”
Amphillis turned round from the mirror.
“Mistress Perrote, may I ask a thing at you?” ”

“ The mercer’s stock, spread out upon the benches of the hall, was a sight at once gay and magnificent. Cloth of gold, diaper, baldekin, velvet, tissue, samite, satin, tartaryn, samitelle, sarcenet, taffata, sindon, cendall, say—all of them varieties of silken stuffs—ribbons of silk, satin, velvet, silver, and gold, were heaped together in brilliant and bewildering confusion of beautiful colours. Lady Foljambe, Mrs Margaret, Marabel, and Agatha, were all looking on. ”

“ Amphillis made no answer, but finished her rissoles in silence, and helped herself to a small pound-cake.
“Verily, some folks be born as old as their grandmothers,” said Agatha, accepting a fieldfare from the sewer, and squeezing a lemon over it. “I would fain enjoy my youth, though I’m little like to do it whilst here I am. Howbeit, it were sheer waste of stuff for any maid to set her heart on Master Norman; he wist not how to discourse with maids. He should have been a monk, in very sooth, for he is fit for nought no better. There isn’t a sparkle about him.” ”

“ No outer physician can be called in.”
“Ah, Sir, forgive me, but I am thinking rather of the soul than the body: it is the worser of the twain.”
“Verily, I guess not how, for she should be hard put to it to commit mortal sin, when mewed for eight years in one chamber. Howbeit, if so be, what then? Is not Father Jordan a priest? One priest is full as good as another.”
“Once more, forgive me, Sir! For the need that I behold, one priest is not as good as another. It is not a mass that my Lady needeth to be sung; it is counsel that she lacketh.” ”

“ To what end? Why, for an husband, child! As to wherewith, that I leave to thee.” And Agatha concluded with another stifled giggle.
“Agatha!” was all that the indignant Amphillis could say in answer. She could hardly have told whether she felt more vexed or astonished. The bare idea of such a thing, evidently quite familiar to Agatha, was utterly new to her. “You never, surely, signify that any decent maid could set herself to seek a man for an husband, like an angler with fish?”
“They must be uncommon queer folks in Hertfordshire if thou art a sample thereof,” was the reply. ”

“ Sir Godfrey looked dubious. “Godfrey should turn aside to see an horse, or to tilt at any jousting that lay in his path; and Matthew, I cast no doubt, should lose your Grace’s letter in a snowdrift.”
“Then have you brought them up but ill,” said the Archbishop. “But what hindereth that you go withal yourself?”
“I, holy Father! I am an old man, and infirm, an’ it like your Grace.”
“Ay, you were full infirm when the tilting was at Leicester,” replied the Archbishop, ironically. “My son, I enjoin thee, as thine Archbishop, that thou send this letter. ”

“ One has to wake ever, here, to another dreary day. If man might but sleep and not wake! or—ah, if man could blot out thirty years, and I sit once more in my mail on my Feraunt at the gate of Hennebon! Dreams, dreams, all empty dreams! Come, child, and lay by this wimple. ’Tis man’s duty to hie him abed now. Let’s do our duty. ’Tis all man has left to me—leave to do as I am bidden. What was that bruit I heard without, an half-hour gone?”
Amphillis, in answer, for Perrote was unable to speak, told the story of Agatha’s mischievous trick. The Countess laughed. ”

“ God’s word, not men’s words; God the Saviour of men, not man the saviour of himself; God the Giver of His Son for the salvation of men, not men the offerers of something to God for their own salvation. And when man or woman reaches that point, that he sees in all the universe only himself and God, the two points are not likely to remain long apart. When the one is need longing for love, and the Other is love seeking for need, what can they do but come close together?
Sir Godfrey set forth for his tournament in magnificent style, and Lady Foljambe and Mistress Margaret with him. ”

“ Amphillis, that worst enemy, the enemy that bindeth these fetters upon her, that bars these gates against her going forth, that hath quenched all the sunlight of her life, and hushed all the music out of it—this enemy is her own son, that she nursed at her bosom—the boy for whose life she risked hers an hundred times, whose patrimony she only saved to him, whose welfare through thirty years hath been dearer to her than her own. ”

“ Holy saints, but I would full willingly quit him of it! God! when I ask Thee for nought costlier than death, canst Thou not grant it to me?”
She looked like an inspired prophetess, that tall white-haired woman, lifting her face up to the morning sun, as if addressing through it the Eternal Light, and challenging the love and wisdom of His decrees. Amphillis shrank back from her. Perrote came a little nearer.
“God is wiser than His creatures,” she said.
“Words, words, Perrote! Only words. And I have heard them all aforetime, and many a time o’er. ”

“ No dog has been more penned up and chained than I! And now, for eight years have I been cabined in one chamber, shut up from the very air of heaven whereunto God made all men free—shut up from every face that I knew and loved, saving one of mine ancient waiting-maids—verily, if they would use me worser than so, they shall be hard put to it, save to thrust me into my coffin and fasten down the lid on me. ”

“ I hate to be ruled like a ledger and notched like a tally!”
“Thou shalt find things be well ruled in this house, Rica,” said Amphillis, thinking to herself that Ricarda and Agatha would make a pair, and might give their mistress some trouble. “But whom hath mine uncle wed, that is thus unbuxom (disobedient) to him?”
“Why, Mistress Regina, the goldsmith’s daughter, that counts herself worth us all, and would fain be a queen in the patty-shop, and cut us all out according to her will.”
“But, Ricarda, I reckoned Mistress Regina a full good and wise woman.” ”

“ The Duke sat down to the collation hastily spread before him, with the air of an exceedingly injured man. He would not have been quite so angry, if his own conscience had not been so provoking as to second every word of Perrote’s reprimand. And as it is never of the least use for a man to quarrel with his conscience, he could do nothing but make Perrote the scape-goat, unless, indeed, he had possessed sufficient grace and humility to accept and profit by the rebuke:—which in his eyes, was completely out of the question. ”

“ A bright colour flushed into the pale cheeks.
“I, Uncle?” she said.
“A lady!” cried Alexandra in a much shriller voice, the word which had struck her father’s ear so lightly being at once noted by her. “Said you a lady, Father? What lady, I pray you?”
“That cannot I say, daughter. Phyllis, thou art to wait on a certain gentlewoman, at Master Goldsmith’s, as next Thursday in the even, that shall judge if thou shouldst be meet for the place. Don thee in thy best raiment, and mind thy manners.” ”

“ None but great saints be thus, as I have been taught.”
“Not the greatest of saints, truly. There is no man alive that sinneth not. What is sin?”
“Breaking the commandments, I reckon.”
“Ay, and in especial that first and greatest—‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength.’ Daughter, hast thou so loved Him—so that neither ease nor pleasure, neither fame nor life, neither earth nor self, came between your love and Him, was set above Him, and served afore Him? Speak truly, like the true woman you are. ”