Chapter XL: Sept. 12

I HAVE been very busy ordering my house and my servants, by the help of Mrs. Warner, whom my mother has lent me till I shall be more at home. She is a great help by her experience and cleverness, and a right pleasant companion as well. She owned to me that she did sometimes long for London, but nevertheless was quite content wherever her mistress was. She has lived with my mother since the days of her first marriage, and travelled with her both in England and in foreign parts, and her mind is enlarged much beyond the ordinary waiting-gentlewoman's tittle-tattle. If it were not selfish toward her and my mother, I would love to keep her altogether.

We went down this afternoon to see the village, if it can be called so, and especially the school of which we had heard. All the men were abroad fishing, as usual, but the women made us very welcome. I found them all speaking well of the schoolmistress, though they owned that they had thought it nonsense at first; but two little orphan maids whom she took in, made such marvellous progress in spinning and sewing that the mothers were soon won over. It seems she asks no fees in money (of which indeed they have next to none), but is content with enough of fish and fuel to eke out the product of her own goats, hens, and herb-garden, which she works with her own hands.

After chatting with one and another, we went on to the school, a decent but very small cottage, from the door of which, as we came up, streamed forth some dozen of urchins, who all stopped to stare at the new lady, of course, and then awaking to a sense of manners, they went off in quite a shower of reverences from the girls, and bobs from the little lads, all the latter very small, of course. I asked the name of one and another, but could extract very little from their shyness. One little girl, however, rather older than the rest, told us her name was Jane Lee—which is next to no name at all, in these parts.

"And what is your dame called?" I asked.

"Oh, just our dame. Mammy calls her Dame Madge."

Just then the dame herself appeared at the door, and I could hardly repress a cry as I recognized in the tall spare figure, and strong but kindly features, one associated with the most solemn passage of all my life—one whom I last saw as the doors of St. Ethelburga's shrine closed on her—Magdalen Jewell! I saw too that she knew me, for she turned very pale. She has grown quite gray, and looks older and more bent, but the repressed fire still shines in her eyes as when she bade Queen Catherine and the rest of us welcome to her cottage at Torfoot. I put my finger on my lip, and I saw she comprehended the signal. She asked us into the cottage, and placed seats for us with all her old courtesy; and while I was puzzling my brains how to begin, she relieved me of my trouble in the most natural way possible.

"I knew not that our young lady of the manor was to be one whom I had seen before!" said she. "You are most welcome, madam, to my poor cottage."

Then to Warner, who looked surprised: "I used to live some way from the convent where the lady was educated, and have seen her both in the church and at the convent gate, helping the kind ladies distribute their alms."

"And I was at your cottage on the moor with good Queen Catherine and her bower-woman," I added. "Do you not remember?"

"I do, though I knew not then it was the Queen!" answered Magdalen. "Do you know, madam, how it fares with that good lady?"

I told her very ill, I feared; and then spoke of the work she had taken in hand.

"Aye, 'tis little I can do!" she answered, "Yet every little helps, and the poor maids are out-of-the-way at home. They take well enough to spinning and making of nets, and I would fain teach them to sew, but needles and thread are so hard to come by, that the mothers do not like to waste them in such little hands!"

I told her I would supply her with both, if she would come up to the house. I was burning with a desire to see her alone.

"Is not the air here bad for your health?" I ventured to ask her.

"Nay, I think not," she answered, taking my meaning at once. "I have had no trouble heretofore."

Mistress Warner now reminded me that it was growing late, and we took our leave. In the evening Magdalen came up to the house, and Richard and I got from her the history of her adventures. She said she had remained in a hiding-place she knew of for three or four days, till danger of pursuit was over, and had then made her way across the moor, disguised as a hawker of small wares, till she reached this place, where she thought herself safe, as there is little or no communication. And indeed there are no roads across the moors which lie between us and my old home, though we are not many miles away. Magdalen was much touched at hearing of the manner of Amice Crocker's death.

"'Twas a blessed end," she said; "and yet I must needs grieve that her young life should be laid down for my old one."

"I do not so regard it," I said. "I believe Amice must soon have died at any rate, and what she did could only at worst have hastened the end a little."

"Her work was done and yours was yet to do," said my husband (the name comes strangely to my pen, even yet). "You are doing a good work here, and so far as my power reaches you, shall be protected in it. Only keep your own counsel, and I trust all will be well."

[These few leaves which follow were writ first on certain small bits of paper, which I chanced to have in my pocket; but in such a cramped hand, and so uncertainly in the darkness, that I had much ado to read them myself when I tried to make the fair copy which I have put in here. I have kept the first leaves, and the very sight of them seems to bring over me the close and heavy smell of the vault just as the odor of crushed ivy will ever bring to mind that stormy October morning.]