Chapter XIV The Mystery Cleared Up
“Father, who are these people who have walked into Holt Farm as if it belonged to them?” asked Jessie that same evening. “Is it for them you have kept it so beautiful?”
The vicar hesitated a moment, looked at his daughter, then said quietly:
“Yes, Jessie, it was for them.”
“Why have you never told me about them? Have you known them long?” she asked.
“I baptized that child,” he answered, “and I buried her mother; she lies beneath the chancel in our little church.”
“Where the cross is in the pavement, Father?” Jessie asked.
“Yes, there,” he answered.
“There is no name,” said Jessie softly.
“No, there is no name,” answered her father.
“Does she know?” asked Jessie.
“Do you mean does the child know?” asked the vicar.
“Yes; who else should I mean?”
“I cannot tell,” he answered; “I do not know myself.”
“And the person who is with her?” asked Jessie.
“She knows everything; more than I do,” answered her father. “She carried the child away, and I have not seen her since; only from time to time I have heard from her, and have had sums of money sent me to keep the house in order. It belongs to her. Now you must ask no more questions, and you must answer none. Can I trust you?”
“Of course you can,” said Jessie, with a little touch of temper. “How beautiful this Agnes is!” she continued; “she is like two persons in one. She has the golden hair of the lady in the picture, and the laughing brown eyes of the man.”
“You saw that?” asked her father.
“Of course I saw it; anyone would,” she answered.
“Well, then, say nothing about it,” said her father.
They sat down to their evening meal. Mary, the faithful servant, who had been with them ever since Jessie’s birth, who had nursed the mistress, who had seen the other little children laid beside her to rest, was excited to-night, and could not keep silence as she waited on the vicar and his daughter.
“The people in the village are all agog to know who the newcomers are,” she said. “Only a few are left who remember the coming and the flitting from the Holt, fifteen years ago. They remember the christening of the babe and the burying of the mother. Old Thomas, the sexton, says he’s sure the child’s name was Agnes. Can that girl be the child?”
“It is even so, Mary,” said the vicar, “but you need not talk about it. Let them say what they will. In a few days they will quiet down, and we shall hear no more gossip.”
“I am not given to gossiping,” said Mary in an injured tone, “but it’s not that easy to shut other people’s mouths.”
“Don’t try,” said her master; “let things be.”
The vicar was right. Things let alone settle down by themselves, and before a month was over Agnes and Patience had stepped into their places; it was as if they had always been at St. Mary’s.
To the child it was a homecoming, a joy to her who had never had a home. From the first it was settled that she should go every day to the vicar to be taught with Jessie.
“She is very ignorant,” Patience said, “she can barely read or write in English; but she is quick, and I shall be much mistaken if she does not learn as fast as you can teach her.”
So the girlish figure running down the hillside, crossing the bridge, picking her way over the tombstones of the little churchyard on her way to the vicarage garden, was soon a familiar sight. The men and women going to their work in the fields wished her good morrow, and she answered them with a glad voice and a brilliant smile, so that at last many went out of their way to win that smile and that gracious greeting.
“She be that beautiful,” they would say amongst themselves, and gradually a few remembered how the vicar had baptized a babe who was born at the Holt and how he had buried the mother a few days later. “If she be that babe,” they said, “surely she be one of us.” And they straightway adopted her.
Holt Farm, though not in itself an extensive holding, consisted of fields which had always been used by the vicar for grazing purposes. Also there was an acre or two of agricultural land, where the corn and the barley waved in their seasons. The vicar had superintended the farming of all this, and had gathered in the money, but now Patience took all things into her own hands. She engaged the labourers, she presided over the dairy, and the cattle and the poultry yard became a great feature of the place. Rolfe was her head man and Martha saw to the house, and the vicar went each day to the Holt to see that all was well with Patience, and if she needed counsel, he gave it.
This homecoming of these two strangers changed many things in the hamlet of St. Mary’s. Holt Farm became a centre to which they all looked. In that scattered parish for miles round the peasants soon learnt that for every ill and for every sorrow they would find help and sympathy there, so they came without fear and returned to their own homes cured, they said, both in body and soul.
Never for one moment did Agnes complain of the tasks set her by the vicar. Jessie was always there, and Jessie always helped her as long as she needed help, but she had come to her teacher with a clear, untired mind, and everything was easy to her. The vicar was a wonderful teacher; as he had taught Jessie, so he taught Agnes, not dry regulation lessons, but the pith of knowledge of people and of things. He let her talk; he let her tell him all her difficulties. She had but little clear knowledge of religion. This he put down to her foreign life. What she did know was indeed a strange medley; but with his strong mind he made things plain to her, so that she learnt to see and to understand rightly.
She was very confidential with him, as if he had been her father.
“I do not know anything about my father or my mother,” she said one day, “only that they are dead.” And tears gathered in her eyes so that the vicar was moved. He laid his hand on her, saying, “I baptized you, Agnes, and the same night your mother died. Will you come and see where her body lies until the great resurrection day?” He took her by the hand, and Jessie followed them. The three knelt before the altar, in front of which was a black cross embedded in the stone. It had been the vicar’s own handiwork.
When they rose from their knees Agnes asked under her voice:
“What was my mother’s name?”
“Go home and ask Dame Patience,” said the vicar. “I cannot tell you; she is your guardian.”
Agnes went home, and that night the vicar came and spoke to Patience, and told her she had best tell the child the mystery of her birth.
“It is no mystery,” said Patience, “only because we feared those to whom Cromwell might give her lands, and what evil might befall her in consequence, have I kept it secret, and the queen also.” Then, taking Agnes by the hand, she pointed to the two pictures and said:
“That is your father, Sir Gilbert de Lisle, and that is your mother, Agnes, his young wife, and my sister. This place belongs to me, it was part of my inheritance, and when your father joined the king’s army he entreated me to bring his wife hither because it is a quiet place, and because to leave her alone at De Lisle Abbey would have been to expose her to great danger if the king’s army were routed. I consented, and he brought her himself to the Holt, and here they parted never to meet again. Our worst fears were realized: your father was killed at Worcester, and from that hour your mother never lifted her head. She waited to give you birth, and died within the week, desiring me to take you as soon as I could over to France to Queen Henrietta Maria. I was loath to do so; I would sooner have kept you here. But she proved right, for before long Cromwell laid his hands on everything, distributed lands and estates, and a child like you, with no one to protect you, would probably have fared badly. We heard that the whole of the De Lisle estate had been bestowed upon a Parliamentarian, but who he was we do not know.”
Agnes turned sharply round:
“But I know,” she said.
“Who?” asked Patience.
“Colonel Newbolt!” answered Agnes.
“How do you know?” asked the vicar.
“Because, as Aunt Patience knows, his son and daughter are great friends of mine, and as we were talking one day they told me they had come into lands belonging to Royalists. I asked the name of the Royalists, and Reginald answered, ‘The De Lisles’. Afterwards Ann told me all about the De Lisles, and the legend concerning them. Then again, I heard from an old man that though they had been driven out the De Lisles would come back again. But Ann and Reginald are my dear friends! I will not have them turned out for me! They would have gone of themselves if they had been asked, but they shall not be asked; they are my friends.” And she burst out weeping.
It was such an unusual thing for Agnes to weep that Patience took her in her arms, and petted and made much of her.
“We will leave things in God’s hands, my child,” she said. “If He gives you back your own it will be well; if not, then it will be well also.”
“What do I want more than I have?” said Agnes. “I am your child, my own dear aunt, and this place shall be my home; here I was born, and here my mother is buried—I am content.”
“So be it,” said Patience. “No one shall trouble you; we will dwell in peace together.”
Verily they did dwell in peace, buried in this little out-of-the-way spot. If Agnes sometimes thought of her old friends, she silenced her longings, for to find them she must go back to a world which she did not love, to London or to Paris, to courts and court life. In the quiet hours of study her mind grew with such rapidity that even the vicar marvelled.
Jessie was no laggard at learning or at work of any sort, but Agnes outstripped her, with that quiet ease with which she did everything. Her beautiful soul was reflected in her form and face. To see her was to love her. She was a sunbeam going in and out of the cottages, running to and fro, kneeling in church; wherever she passed, brightness followed in her wake.
Excepting at night she and Jessie were never parted. The Holt and the Vicarage were one home for both; so they grew side by side, Jessie a quiet maiden, very wise and good, ordering her father’s house, teaching in the little school, visiting the sick all day. In the evenings the two would sit together reading or talking, the vicar and Patience would join them, and the former would bring tidings from the outside world. Two or three times a year he would go into Appleby, and then he would come back with a great store of court news. He told them of the battles which were being fought at sea, of the selling of Dunkirk—a shame to England—of stories of De Ruyter and many other great captains.
“England is losing her prestige,” he said, “by sea and by land. The king loves pleasure too well, and his country too little.”
Like tall lilies the two girls grew, side by side, with sunshine in their hearts and on their faces. The tender blossoms of spring, the bright summer days with their fruits and flowers, the mellow autumn with its crimson sunsets, the snows of winter, went and came almost unheeded by them, for each season had its joys. There was not a cloud on those young brows; unreasoningly, as if it were a natural thing, they rejoiced in life. Shadows had gone before and might follow after, but for the time they walked in light.