CHAPTER X.

HOME GOSSIP

TO our young friend, the journey to Bridgewater in company with Master Fleming was one long pleasure. It was a great comfort to pour out his heart to one who understood him fully, to bring forward all the questions which the reading of Scripture had raised in his mind, and to listen to Master Fleming's explanations and remarks.

To his extreme delight, he found that Master Fleming had been in Rome and even in Jerusalem, as well as in Germany, and the Low Countries, as Holland was usually called. Jack could have wished the road to Bridgewater a hundred miles long, he had so much to say and so much to hear.

"Oh, how I wish I could travel abroad and see foreign lands!" he exclaimed. "It seems to me as if I were just beginning to find out how large the world is."

"It is a large place, no doubt, and we have as yet seen but a small portion thereof," replied the merchant. "There are the far-off parts of India and China, and those lands over the sea which have been discovered of late by the Spaniards, and which are described as a kind of earthly paradise by those who have seen them. But here we are, as I think, at our destination. Are not those the roofs of Bridgewater?"

"They are so, and that tall steeple is that of the Church of St. Mary. I will guide you to the house of Sir William Leavett, which is by the waterside. I could wish our journey were to be longer."

"I shall remain with my cousin for a month or more, and hope to see you many times," said the merchant, "as well as to make the acquaintance of your good father. And is this my cousin's house? Truly it is a modest one."

"That large house farther up the street should be by right," said Jack, "but the old priest of St. Mary's lives in it, and hath done for forty years. He is very old and infirm, and our Father William will not let the old man be disturbed. He never thinks of himself or his own comfort."

"He was always self-sacrificing, sometimes almost recklessly so," replied the merchant. "Well, my young friend, I must bid you farewell for a time, but I will see you again. Remember what I have said to you, and be careful, for your own sake and that of others; yet let not your care lead you to the baseness of denying your Lord, be the risk what it may. Better a hundred deaths in one than that. May the Lord have you in His keeping."

Arrived in Bridgewater, Jack could almost have thought his absence a dream, everything looked so entirely unchanged. On entering the shop, however, he noticed two or three alterations. A great bowpot of sweet flowers and herbs stood on one end of the counter. The cakes and other matters in which Master Lucas dealt were arranged with more than usual neatness and taste, and an elderly kind-faced woman, dressed in black, whom Jack had never seen before, was arranging on a tray in the window some confections of a more delicious and choice description than Jack had ever seen there before. She started as he entered, and nearly let fall her tray.

"Lady! How you startled me, lad!" she exclaimed in a brisk, cheery voice. "You will be wanting Master Lucas now?"

"Is my father well, madam?" asked Jack, using unconsciously the title he would have employed in addressing a lady of rank, for there was something superior in the stranger's whole appearance.

"Good lack! You are then young Master Jack come home again. Your father will be right glad to see you. Here, Anne! Dame Cicely! Here is Master Jack come home."

Jack's wonder as to who the stranger could be was cut short by the entrance of Cicely and Anne from the dwelling-house and of his father from the bakery; and now he really felt himself at home again. Cicely kissed and hugged him, held him off at arm's length to see how well he looked, and then kissed him again. His father was not one whit behind, and even Anne warmed up for once and was almost genial. Jack thought her looking much worse than when he left home. She was paler and thinner than ever, and her eyes had a frightened, almost a guilty, expression. As soon as he was alone with Cicely, he began to question her about his sister.

"Well, she is much as usual, poor thing," said Cicely. "No great comfort to any one, nor yet to herself, poor dear. I doubt Sister Barbara was a great disappointment to her as it turned out, though she built much on her coming."

"Who is Sister Barbara?" asked Jack.

"Why, the lady that came to us when the gray nuns' house was broken up," replied Cicely. "She is going to some convent in the north, when she can do so safely; but meantime your father gave Anne leave to ask her to stay with us. You saw her in the shop when you came."

"Was that Sister Barbara?" asked Jack, surprised. "I never thought of that. I am sure she looks like a nice lady."

"And so she is indeed, and yet she was in a way a great disappointment to your sister. You see, Anne thought that when Sister Barbara came she would have someone to help her in her penances and prayers. So she fitted up the room next her own with a rood, and an image of our Lady, and I don't know what all, and there Sister Barbara was to live secluded, and Anne was to fetch her meals, and they were to have another little convent all to themselves. Your father never interfered with her, but let her arrange matters in her own fashion; only he smiled when Anne talked about Sister Barbara's living secluded, and about her having lived in the convent ever since she was three years old, and knowing nothing of earthly vanities; and he said the gentlewoman should have her way, whatever it was."

"He is certainly the best-natured man that ever lived," said Jack. "But please go on, Cousin Cicely, I want to know how it turned out."

"Well, it turned out differently and much more pleasantly than anybody expected," continued Cicely. "Sister Barbara came at the time appointed, and Anne took her up to her room where she was to be secluded. But, bless you, she did not stay there, not she. The second day, she came down into the kitchen where I was busy cooking, and overseeing the maids. She was as much interested as could be in everything, and it being a fast-day, she proposed to me that she should make some almond pottage, such as they used to have in the convent at such times, for your father's dinner. Well, my dear, I thought I was a pretty good cook—"

"And so you are," said Jack.

"But, bless you, I cannot hold a candle to her! I never saw anywhere such nice things as she makes. Well, she was a bit shy of your father at first, but pretty soon she got to dining with the family, and bringing her work down in the sitting-room, and there was an end of all the seclusion. By and by she came to me, and says she:

"'Dame Cicely, I am tired of idleness, and I want to do something to pay for my keeping.'"

"'Laws me, madam!' says I, 'Don't you think of such a thing. You are a born lady,' says I, 'and I am sure Master Lucas thinks it a pleasure and an honor to have you for a guest.'"

"'You are all very good people,' says Sister Barbara. 'I never guessed before how lovely a thing family life could be. For you see, dame, my mother died when I was but a babe in arms,' says she, 'and I was put into the convent, and have never known anything else. But now I am here with you,' says she, 'life seems so much brighter and worth so much more than it has ever done before.'"

"'Laws, madam,' says I, 'I am glad you like our homely ways, I am sure.'"

"Well, the long and the short of it was, that she said she knew how to make many kinds of sweetmeats and cakes, and she did not see why she should not make them for your father to sell in the shop; and she prayed me to mention the matter to him. Well, I did so, and says he:"

"'Let the gentlewoman have her way and please herself. Mayhap she will feel more at home and contented, if she thinks she is doing something for her own support.'"

"And so she fell to work in good earnest, and filled the shop window with her pretty dainties; and your father says she makes him a great deal of profit. And she has left off wearing her nun's robe and veil, for she says she does not want to be stared at."

"But what does Anne say to all this?" asked Jack.

"Why, she was terribly shocked at first, especially at Sister Barbara's leaving off her nun's dress; but then Father William upholds her in it, and even Father Barnaby says it may be just as well so long as she is out of her convent, and so long as she is such an old woman. Sister Barbara laughed well at that, and so did your father, for you see she is a fine lady even now and as graceful and comely as a willow tree. Many an older and plainer woman has been married. But I must say she is far pleasanter in the house than poor, dear Anne."

"You must not find fault with Anne, dear Cicely," said Jack. "She hath a great deal to trouble her, and I dare say it vexes her to see her friend so different from what she expected. But does not Sister Barbara go to church with Anne?"

"Ay, that she does, and says her beads at home as well, and works for the poor folk. And do you know, I heard her talking with Anne one day about that very matter. Says Anne:"

"'I don't see how you can find any relish in prayer and meditation, and yet be so much occupied with worldly matters.'"

"'My dear child,' answers Sister Barbara, 'I never enjoyed prayer and meditation so much in all my life as I do now, when I come to them from helping Dame Cicely in the kitchen, or making tarts and sweetmeats for the shop, or doing some little good turn for neighbor Benton.'"

"For I forgot to tell you, Dame Benton is brought to bed of twins, after so long a time, and you never did see anything so delighted as Sister Barbara was with the babies. I don't suppose she ever saw one before in all her life."

"Well," said Jack, very much interested and desirous to bring Cicely back to the point.

"Oh! 'Well,' says Sister Barbara, 'I never took so much comfort in prayer and meditation in all my life before, not when I had hardly anything else to do.'"

"Anne didn't seem very much pleased at this, and says she, 'I always thought a religious life was one thing and a secular life another.'"

"'Ah, my dear daughter,' replies Sister Barbara, 'I have been thinking that perhaps we have been mistaken in that very thing, and that all lives may be religious lives—that of the family as well as that of the cloister.'"

"I believe she is right," said Jack with decision. "Certainly God set people in families long before there were any such things as convents, as far as I can find out, and I suppose He knew what was good for them."

"Well, well, my dear lad, these are matters too high for us," replied Cousin Cicely. "Anyhow I am glad Sister Barbara is so content, and I wish she might abide with us, for she is like sunshine in the house, so she is; and as kind and pleasant with me as an own sister, for all she is a born lady and we only simple folk. I only wish Anne would take pattern by her, for she is a kind of thorn in your father's side—that is the truth."

"I think Anne looks worse than ever," remarked Jack. "She has such a scared look. Does she continue her penances?"

"Oh, yes, and increases them every day. I never saw her so strict; and now she has taken to visiting the poor folk, she just wears herself to a shadow."

"Does she visit the poor folk?" asked Jack. "I should think that might cheer her up a little."

"So it would, I think, if she went about it in a different way," replied Cicely, "but you see she makes a penance of that as she does of everything else, and somehow the poor folk seem to feel that she does, and that spoils it all. Now when I run about among them, I just do it in a neighborly way; and I gossip a bit with this one about her baby, and with that one about the new gown and kirtle she is making for her little maid, or her old mother maybe; and I hear the old folk tell their old tales about the times that were so much better than these, you know; and really I think I enjoy it as much as they do, and I come home feeling better, and disposed to be thankful for all the good things about me. But Anne, she takes no interest in all their little plans, and unless she can do something directly for them, she will not stay. She sometimes talks to them about their religious duties, and blames them for not going oftener to church, but she never sits down for a bit of neighborly talk. So they don't like her and don't feel at ease with her, and she feels that, and it makes her colder than ever."

"I understand," said Jack. "She does it like task work, and not because she loves God and her neighbor. She seems to think God is a hard master and a harsh judge, and not a kind loving Father. I wish she could see things differently."