The King's Achievement, Robert Hugh Benson [beginner reading books for adults txt] 📗

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It was an immense pleasure to Chris to notice the difference in Nicholas's behaviour towards him. There was none of that loud and cheerful rallying that stood for humour, no criticisms of his riding or his costume. The squire asked him a hundred questions, almost nervously, about the Holy Maid and himself, and what had passed between them.

"They say the Host was carried to her through the air from Calais, Chris, when the King was there. Did you hear her speak of that?"

Chris shook his head.

"There was not time," he said.

"And then there was the matter of the divorce--" Nicholas turned his head slightly; "Ralph cannot hear us, can he? Well--the matter of the divorce--I hear she denounced that, and would have none of it, and has written to the Pope, too."

"They were saying something of the kind," said Chris, "but I thought it best not to meddle."

"And what did she say to you?"

Chris told him the story, and Nicholas's eyes grew round and fixed as he listened; his mouth was a little open, and he murmured inarticulate comments as they rode together up from the mill.

"Lord!" he said at last, "and she said all that about hell. God save us! And her tongue out of her mouth all the while! And did you see anything yourself? No devils or angels?"

"I saw nothing," said Chris. "I just listened, but she saw them."

"Lord!" said Nicholas again, and rode on in profound silence.

The Maxwells were to stay to supper at the Court; and drive home afterwards; so there was no opportunity for Chris to go down and bathe in the lake as he usually did in summer after a day's hunting, for supper was at seven o'clock, and he had scarcely more than time to dress.

Nicholas was very talkative at supper, and poured out all that Chris had told him, with his usual lack of discretion; for the other had already told the others once all the details that he thought would interest them.

"They were talking about the divorce," he broke out, and then stopped and eyed Ralph craftily; "but I had better not speak of that here--eh, Chris?"

Ralph looked blandly at his plate.

"Chris did not mention that," he said. "Tell us, Nick."

"No, no," cried Nicholas. "I do not want you to go with tales to town. Your ears are too quick, my friend. Then there was that about the Host flying from Calais, eh, Chris? No, no; you said you had heard nothing of that."

Chris looked up and his face was a little flushed.

"No, Nick," he said.

"There seems to have been a great deal that Chris did not tell us--" began Ralph.

Sir James glanced swiftly from his seat under the canopy.

"He told us all that was needed," he said.

"Aha!" broke out Nicholas again, "but the Holy Maid said that the King would not live six months if he--"

Chris's face was full of despair and misery, and his father interrupted once more.

"We had better not speak of that, my son," he said to Nicholas. "It is best to leave such things alone."

Ralph was smiling broadly with tight lips by now.

"By my soul, Nick, you are the maddest wind-bag I have ever heard. All our heads might go for what you have said to-night. Thank God the servants are gone."

"Nick," cried Mary imploringly, "do hold your tongue."

Lady Torridon looked from one to the other with serene amusement, and there was an odd pause such as generally fell when she showed signs of speaking. Her lips moved but she said nothing, and ran her eyes over the silver flagons before her.

When the Maxwells had gone at last, and prayers were over, Chris slipped across the Court with a towel, and went up to the priest's room over the sacristy. Mr. Carleton looked up from his lamp and rose.

"Yes, Chris," he said, "I will come. The moon will be up soon."

They went down together through the sacristy door on to the level plateaux of lawns that stretched step after step down to the dark lake. The sky was ablaze with stars, and in the East there was a growing light in the quarter where the moon was at its rising. The woods beyond the water were blotted masses against the sky; and the air was full of the rich fragrance of the summer night. The two said very little, and the priest stopped on the bank as Chris stepped out along the little boarded pier that ran out among the rushes into deep water. There was a scurry and a cry, and a moor-hen dashed out from under cover, and sped across the pond, scattering the silver points that hung there motionless, reflected from the heaven overhead.

Chris was soon ready, and stood there a moment, a pale figure in the gloom, watching the shining dots rock back again in the ripples to motionlessness. Then he lifted his hands and plunged.

It seemed to him, as he rose to the surface again, as if he were swimming between two sides. As he moved softly out across the middle, and a little ripple moved before him, the water was invisible. There was only a fathomless gulf, as deep below as the sky was high above, pricked with stars. As he turned his head this way and that the great trees, high overhead, seemed less real than those two immeasurable spaces above and beneath. There was a dead silence everywhere, only broken by the faint suck of the water over his shoulder, and an indescribably sweet coolness that thrilled him like a strain of music. Under its influence, again, as last night, the tangible, irritating world seemed to sink out of his soul; here he was, a living creature alone in a great silence with God, and nothing else was of any importance.

He turned on his back, and there was the dark figure on the bank watching him, and above it the great towered house, with its half-dozen lighted windows along its eastern side, telling him of the world of men and passion.

"Look," came the priest's voice, and he turned again, and over the further bank, between two tall trees, shone a great silver rim of the rising moon. A path of glory was struck now across the black water, and he pleased himself by travelling up it towards the remote splendour, noticing as he went how shadows had sprung into being in that moment, and how the same light that made the glory made the dark as well. His soul seemed to emerge a stage higher yet from the limits in which the hot day and the shouting and the horns and the crowded woods had fettered it. How remote and little seemed Ralph's sneers and Nicholas's indiscretions and Mary's pity! Here he moved round in a cooler and serener mood. That keen mood, whether physical or spiritual he did not care to ask, made him inarticulate as he walked up with the priest ten minutes later. But Mr. Carleton seemed to understand.

"There are some things besides the divorce best not talked about," he said, "and I think bathing by starlight is one of them."

They passed under the chapel window presently, and Chris noticed with an odd sensation of pleasure the little translucent patch of colour between the slender mullions thrown by the lamp within--a kind of reflex or anti-type of the broad light shining over the water.

"Come up for a while," went on the priest, as they reached the side-entrance, "if you are not too tired."

The two went through the sacristy-door, locking it behind them, and up the winding stairs in the turret at the corner to the priest's chamber. Chris threw himself down, relaxed and happy, in the tall chair by the window, where he could look out and see the moon, clear of the trees now, riding high in heaven.

"That was a pity at supper," said the priest presently, as he sat at the table. "I love Sir Nicholas and think him a good Christian, but he is scarcely a discreet one."

"Tell me, father," broke out Chris, "what is going to happen?"

Mr. Carleton looked at him smiling. He had a pleasant ugly face, with little kind eyes and sensitive mouth.

"You must ask Mr. Ralph," he said, "or rather you must not. But he knows more than any of us."

"I wish he would not speak like that."

"Dear lad," said the priest, "you must not feel it like that. Remember our Lord bore contempt as well as pain."

There was silence a moment, and then Chris began again. "Tell me about Lewes, father. What will it be like?"

"It will be bitterly hard," said the priest deliberately. "Christ Church was too bitter for me, as you know. I came out after six months, and the Cluniacs are harder. I do not know if I lost my vocation or found it; but I am not the man to advise you in either case."

"Ralph thinks it is easy enough. He told me last night in the carriage that I need not trouble myself, and that monks had a very pleasant time. He began to tell me some tale about Glastonbury, but I would not hear it."

"Ah," said the chaplain regretfully, "the world's standard for monks is always high. But you will find it hard enough, especially in the first year. But, as I said, I am not the man to advise you--I failed."

Chris looked at him with something of pity in his heart, as the priest fingered the iron pen on the table, and stared with pursed lips and frowning forehead. The chaplain was extraordinarily silent in public, just carrying on sufficient conversation not to be peculiar or to seem morose, but he spoke more freely to Chris, and would often spend an hour or two in mysterious talk with Sir James. Chris's father had a very marked respect for the priest, and had had more than one sharp word with his wife, ten years before when he had first come to the house, and had found Lady Torridon prepared to treat her chaplain with the kind of respect that she gave to her butler. But the chaplain's position was secured by now, owing in a large measure to his own tact and unobtrusiveness, and he went about the house a quiet, sedate figure of considerable dignity and impressiveness, performing his duties punctually and keeping his counsel. He had been tutor to both the sons for a while, to Ralph only for a few months, but to Chris since his twelfth birthday, and the latter had formed with him a kind of peaceful confederacy, often looking in on him at unusual hours, always finding him genial, although very rarely confidential. It was to Mr. Carleton, too, that Chris owed his first drawings to the mystical life of prayer; there was a shelf of little books in the corner by the window of the priest's room, from which he would read to the boy aloud, first translating them into English as he went, and then, as studies progressed, reading the Latin as it stood; and that mysteriously fascinating world in which great souls saw and heard eternal things and talked familiarly with the Saviour and