Towers in the Mist

  It was as Canon Leigh had thought; in this generation the par­ents paid.

  “Then you do not mean to take your M.A.?” he questioned mildly.

  “I don’t think, my intellectual powers being what they are, that it is of the slightest use even to try for it,” said Nicolas disarmingly. “Do you?”

  “Frankly, no,” agreed Canon Leigh. “But Faithful Crocker—I should be sorry to see him throw away his chances of academic distinction.”

  “He doesn’t mean to. Grace must wait the seven years until he takes his M.A. Grace is quite willing to wait, for she will be occupied meanwhile in the bringing up of the little boys and the twins. When Faithful has finished his career at Oxford he will marry Grace.”

  “And upon what will he support her?” asked Canon Leigh again.

  “He will obtain some lucrative post.”

  “I hope he may, I hope he may,” murmured Canon Leigh doubtfully. “Grace, I see, is a party to all these plans, but Joyeuce, if I have understood you aright, is not?”

  “No,” said Nicolas, and for the first time his confidence seemed to desert him. He made a little helpless gesture with his hands and his bright eyes clouded. “She loves me, but her sense of duty stands in her way. It is almost as though she loved martyrdom. I do not understand. Ever since December I have not dared to speak to her about it again. She holds at arm’s length yet all the time her eyes are asking me to come and take her. . . . What can I do?”

  Canon Leigh looked at the young man with new attention. There was patience in his voice, humility and suffering, qualities which the older man recognized as being ingredients in a love that time had tested and matured. They were not characteristics that he would have expected to find in Nicolas, either. It might be, he thought, glancing at him keenly, that there was a strength in this boy that he had not suspected. He wondered if perhaps he was inclined to distrust beauty and charm and gaiety as such. . . . In his own sex, that was, for like all men, no matter how saintly, he could not but feel that it was the duty of a woman to be lovely. . . . He feared that he was. He was inclined to be drawn most easily to the man in whom a plain face was transfigured by beauty of soul. But why should not the contrary be sometimes the case? Might not outward beauty sometimes work inwards? The longing of every human creature is for unity and it might be that the beautiful strove, even though unconsciously, to make their minds and souls as fair as their outward seeming. . . . They had reached the further end of the quadrangle and he himself turned that their pacing might be prolonged.

  “A lover of martyrdom,” he said slowly, his thoughts going to Lati­mer who had embraced it with such eagerness and Cranmer who had so pitifully shrunk from it. “There are those who have it, those whose loyalty is so confident that they burn to put it to the test. But they are rare who have such confidence, and I do not think that Joyeuce is one of them. She has never been over-confident.”

  “Then why?” asked Nicolas.

  “A conviction she has that what she wants to do must necessarily be wrong. Many of us carry that certainty with us out of childhood, especially those, like Joyeuce, who have had to grow up too soon and have lost that time of happy transition in which old habits of thought quietly leave them and new ones as quietly take their place. They are often very childlike, those men and women who have had to grow up too soon.”

  “And yet at the same time very old and very wise.”

  Canon Leigh nodded and glanced at Nicolas with growing appreciation. In a few meetings he seemed to have learned a good deal about Joyeuce.

  “Then,” pleaded Nicolas, “will you not persuade Joyeuce that it is right she should marry me?”

  “But is it right?” smiled Canon Leigh. “Will you make her happy? What do I know about you?”

  “It is quite right,” said Nicolas, and flung up his head with something of his old arrogance. “I think my love permeates her life, and hers mine. It is to me what light is to the sun and perfume to the rose; I am valueless without it. We have that to give each other which we must give each other. I must have her joy and she needs that I should give her that transition time, that time of happiness, of which you spoke. . . . I shall take her to Court.”

  “What?” gasped Canon Leigh. It seemed to him that Nicolas had dropped abruptly from insight to childishness. He spoke of capacity for joy in Joyeuce, of which her father himself had seen no signs, and then he spoke of taking her to Court, a place in which Canon Leigh had no doubt at all that she would be perfectly miserable.

  “You are wrong,” Nicolas said, answering the unspoken criticism. “I think she is like me. I think that she is not very happy in a humdrum life. . . . You should have seen her joy on Midsummer Eve when I took her to that enchanted garden at the Tavern. . . . She wants unordinary experiences and it is not good for her that she should have them only in her spirit. She needs to laugh and sing and dance. She needs to wear a new dress every day and have all the men at Court writing verses to her eyebrows. She needs to be so very happy for a short while that the whole of the rest of her life will glow with it. . . . And all that she needs I will give her.”

  “To promise that is to shoulder a great responsibility,” smiled Canon Leigh.

  “I don’t care,” said Nicolas. “I used to dodge responsibility, but I don’t now. You can’t have anything you want without it.”

  “And so I am to persuade Joyeuce to marry you.”

  “Yes,” said Nicolas.

  “Well, I will do it,” said Canon Leigh. “I know next to nothing about you, but I believe that you are right.” He sighed. It seemed odd to him that it should be the duty of parents to hand over their children to the care of comparative strangers; even odder that these strangers should seem to have an instinctive knowledge of the children’s needs that the parents in years of intimacy had not fathomed. But it was the way of life. By a continual progression to things that are new and strange the world goes on. He turned and led the way back again towards the Fair Gate. They parted in silence but courteously, Nicolas’s cap with its curling white feather sweeping the ground as he bowed. They felt respect for each other and even a dawning of affection.

  3.

  Nicolas careered joyously up the steps to his room, three at a time, and burst through the door with a noise and speed that seemed to Faithful, immersed in his books, unnecessary. He raised his large head from the hands that propped it and gazed at his fellow scholar more in sorrow than in anger. Then silently he raised a lean forefinger and pointed it at a sealed document that lay on the oak table.

  Nicolas’s jaws dropped and he felt a prickly sensation up the spine. He had been just about to tell Faithful of the conversation in the quadrangle but the spate of words that had been tumbling up his throat now fell suddenly back again, making him feel slightly sick. He had known that this was coming, of course, but it was his habit never to concentrate upon unpleasant things until they were actually thrust under his nose. He too pointed a finger at the sealed document. “Pass me the damned thing,” he groaned. Faithful passed it, holding it cautiously by one corner as though it were filled with gunpowder that might explode at any moment. Nicolas, sighing pitifully, opened it and read words that from past experience he knew only too well, though the detestable missive was written in Latin.

  “In Dei nomine, Amen. . . . By this present document let it plainly appear and be known to all that in the fifteenth hundred and sixty-sixth year of the Lord, in the seventh year of the reign of Elizabeth, by the grace of God Queen of England, France and Ireland, defender of the faith and on earth supreme head of the English and Irish Church, there have been summoned by the Subdean, with the consent of the Dean, the learned Censors in the Church of Christ at Oxford to examine the youth of the same Church according to the statute of that house, which orders that at the end of two years each one be examined as to his progress both in learning and in morals. Let all them to whom this present writing comes k
now that for those whose names are written below such a trial by the Subdean and Censors is to be held.”

  And Nicolas’s name was written below. He tossed the thing to Faithful and fell groaning on to the stool before the desk.

  “ ‘Learning and morals,’ ” quoted Faithful from the loathsome missive. “Well, anyway, your morals are all right.” He spoke a little tartly for he himself, though he dreaded the ordeal that would be his also at the end of his first two years, was nevertheless already armed at all points. There was nothing, he was able to assure himself modestly, that they would be likely to ask him that he would be unable to answer. . . . But with poor Nicolas he feared it was very much otherwise.

  Poor Nicolas arose, dipped a towel in a jug of water, tied it savagely round his forehead, collected an armful of books and once more dropped groaning upon his stool. “By the mercy of Providence,” he informed Faithful, “I have tackled the old man before instead of after. He’s Subdean this year, you know. If I had left it until after—” He broke off and shuddered at the thought of Canon Leigh’s possible reaction to the pleading of a prospective son-in-law who had just degraded himself academically in the eyes of the whole College.

  “Left what until after?” asked Faithful.

  Nicolas explained and Faithful’s eyes widened in horror. “You didn’t mention me and Grace?” he gasped.

  “Of course I did. How could I help it? I said you and Grace couldn’t be for years and years, and he seemed to take comfort in that.”

  Faithful waved his hands in some distress of mind, but then, his eyes falling on his book, he forgot about his marriage problems. He loved Grace dearly but, like Saint Edmund before him, his first love was learning. In a moment he was so absorbed that he was deaf and blind to everything but the printed words that marched across the page in front of him, carrying him with them into a country that was his own country, where he belonged and where he was happy.

  So it was Nicolas who heard the sounding of the trumpet and the clatter under the Fair Gate.

  “What’s that?” he demanded, casting the wet towel from him, for it covered his ears and prevented him from hearing things that were really important.

  “What’s what?” asked Faithful crossly, for the flung towel had hit him in the face and brought him back out of the far happy place where he had been. . . . If Nicholas found it a trial having Faithful for his servitor Faithful found being Nicolas’s servitor an even heavier one. . . . The man would neither work himself nor permit others to do so.

  Nicolas swept all the books off his desk on to the floor with a gesture of his right arm and leaned across it with his head out of the window. “The Chancellor!” he cried.

  At this even Faithful took his nose out of his book and thrust it out of the other window. “Coming this way!” he gasped.

  The Chancellor, dressed in puce velvet, with a purple cloak embroidered with silver, it being the season of Lent when a certain soberness of attire was considered seemly, was strolling beneath their windows, attended by Dean Godwin and a couple of conversational and portly merchants dressed in fine furred gowns, with gold chains about their necks and be-ringed fat hands folded upon their stomachs, who strutted in their wake like a couple of gobbling turkey cocks.

  “Now what are they up to?” demanded Nicolas of Faithful. “That is Master Wythygge of the Guild of Stoneworkers, and the other is Master Baggs who does house decorating. Is the whole College to be spring-cleaned?”

  “They’re going to the Leighs’!” ejaculated Faithful.

  “By cock and pie, they are!” cried Nicolas, and hung out of the window at infinite peril to life and limb. There came a thundering knock at the Leighs’ modest front door, which yielded with the suddenness of complete astonishment, and the four great ones entered and were lost to sight.

  “Canon Leigh is in debt,” said Nicolas with some satisfaction. . . . His academic inferiority made him take pleasure in a feeling of financial soundness. . . . “In debt to Master Wythygge and Master Baggs.”

  “The Chancellor wouldn’t concern himself with that,” said Faithful. “It must be something much more important.”

  “Then let’s go and call casually and find out,” said Nicolas, withdrawing his head.

  But Faithful was firm. “I have never met anyone,” he said bitterly, “who could think of so many other things to do besides work.” And he pointed once more to the fatal document. “In Dei nomine, Amen. . . . Examined as to his progress both in learning and in morals,” it said, staring mockingly up from the floor. Sighing, Nicolas searched for his wet towel. “This place would be perfect,” he said, “if it were not for the work.”

  4.

  Canon Leigh the Subdean was bent low over his study table, setting searching examination questions upon morals, when Dorothy Goatley, her eyes bulging in her head and her hands clinging to the edge of the door as though she were about to fall to the floor in a fit, ushered in the Chancellor, Dean Godwin, Master Wythygge and Master Baggs. Canon Leigh, more annoyed than honored by the interruption, rose and bowed, exchanged greetings, and swept a litter of papers from the chairs to the floor that his visitors might sit down.

  “The Chancellor has come,” said Dean Godwin, exchanging an unseen glance of sympathy with his colleague, “to discuss with us matters pertaining to the Queen’s proposed visit to Oxford this summer. The Queen’s Grace has expressed it as her wish that she should be lodged at Christ Church. She takes a great interest in our College, as you know, because of its connection with Westminster.” He did not add because also of its connection with his own good looks, but the knowledge of the connection was in the deep gloom of his eye.

  Canon Leigh bowed politely but without enthusiasm. He had already heard of the Queen’s proposed visit and feared that, though doubtless an honor, it would nevertheless be a great hindrance to concentrated work on the part of the scholars.

  “I have examined the plans of the College,” said the Chancellor, “and it seems to me that your house is the best place in which to lodge Her Grace and those more intimate members of her household who will be with her. Other members of the Court will be lodged in other houses and in the rooms of the dons, who will, I am sure, not be slow to appreciate the honor done them.”

  Another glance of profound sympathy sped from the Dean to Canon Leigh. “Yours is the only house,” he explained in a low voice, “which immediately adjoins the great hall. Her Grace must be lodged where she can pass from her place of residence to the hall without exposing herself to the outer elements. It might rain.”

  “But there is no door from my house to the hall,” said Canon Leigh.

  “Doors can be made,” said the Chancellor, and waved his scented gloves airily.

  Canon Leigh now understood the situation, and also the presence of Master Wythygge and Master Baggs. He and his family were to be swept from their home that the Queen might be accommodated. Holes would be knocked in his walls by Master Wythygge. The house would be re-decorated, probably quite regardless of his personal taste, by Master Baggs, who as likely as not would paint naked cupids all round the house and place a portrait of Venus, a woman he detested, over his study mantelpiece. He would be unable to get at his books for a long period of time and his life, what with fuss, excitement, muddle and one thing and another, would for an even longer period be a complete hell. But he did not blench. He knew what was expected of him. He bowed low to the Chancellor and expressed himself as overwhelmed with delight that his poor home was considered worthy to shelter her beloved and sacred majesty Queen Elizabeth of England. . . . Behind the Chancellor’s magnificent back Dean Godwin’s eyes, once more meeting Canon Leigh’s, expressed the woebegone conviction that for him too this affair was going to be no joke.

  But they knew themselves to be not alone in their sufferings. The Queen’s Royal Progresses, when she traveled with her entire Court from town to town and country house to countr
y house all over her kingdom, were her annual summer holiday, and she enjoyed them every bit as much as did her loyal poor people in town and country who were allowed to come pressing up to her litter to see her and talk to her and bask in her smiles. But for the Court and her hosts it was not all jam. The preparations for the Progresses were arduous for those who went with her, and their sufferings throughout them those of the souls in purgatory. The hundreds of luggage carts going on ahead frequently made the roads almost impassable. Probably they lost their luggage. Only the most important of them could expect comfortable rooms to sleep in at night. The Queen changed her plans every five minutes and snapped their heads off when they disagreed with her. It rained. They caught cold. They did everything they possibly could to persuade the Queen’s Grace to curtail her Progresses, but were invariably unsuccessful. “Let the old stay behind,” she would say caustically to grumbling noblemen of uncertain age, “and the young and able come with me.” Then, of course, they would all have to follow after, cursing volubly. Nor was it all pleasure for the hosts, who found the Queen’s visits an expensive honor. A ten days’ visit to Lord Burghley cost him over a thousand pounds and my Lord of Leicester himself, after entertaining the Queen at Kenilworth, found himself out of pocket by a small fortune. So the Dean and Canon Leigh were only two more among an army of martyrs who were spread over the length and breadth of England. They submitted with only the breath of a sigh.

  “Perhaps I may be permitted to make a tour of the house?” suggested the Chancellor. “Master Wythygge and Master Baggs will then see what work will need to be done.”

  Master Wythygge and Master Baggs bowed fatly and smiled with delight, their generous curves suggesting to Canon Leigh’s tormented mind that they would without doubt think a great deal needed to be done. He opened the door, ushering them and the Chancellor into the hall, himself lingering behind to whisper in distraction to Dean Godwin, “Who pays?”