RESTORED

There were great rejoicings at Arnhem when Sir Philip Sidney came back to join the main army, stationed there under the command of the Earl of Leicester.

Sir Philip had been appointed Colonel of the Zeeland regiment of horse and, to the disappointment of his friends, the Queen chose to be offended that this mark of honour had been conferred upon him.

The character of the Queen was full of surprising inconsistencies, and it seems incredible that she should have grudged one whom she called the gem of her Court the honour which she actually wished conferred on Count Hohenlo, a man who, though a brave soldier, was known for his drunken, dissolute habits.

The Earl of Leicester made a jest of the Queen's displeasure, and only laughed at the concern Sir Francis Walsingham showed in the letter in which he announced it.

'Let it not disturb your peace,' the Earl said to Lady Frances, who, filled with pride in her husband's achievements, was depressed when she heard her father's report that the Queen laid the blame on Sir Philip's ambition, and implied that he had wrung the honour from his uncle.

'Let it not disturb your peace,' the Earl repeated, 'any more than it does mine. It is but part and parcel of Her Highness's ways with those whom she would seem at times to think paragons. Do I not not know it full well? I have said in my despatch the truth, and I have begged your father, sweet Frances, to communicate what I say without delay to the Queen; my words for sure will not count for nought.'

'The Queen had not heard of the last grand victory, the taking of Axel, when she made the complaint. Ambitious! nay, my good uncle, Philip is never ambitious save for good.'

The Earl stroked the fair cheek of Philip Sidney's young wife, saying,—

'Philip is happy in possessing so loyal a lady for his wife; he can afford to let the smiles or frowns of the Queen go by. And here he comes to attest the truth of what I say.'

Sir Philip had often to doubt the ability of his uncle as a general, but at this time they were on terms of greater friendliness than ever before. Sir Philip had, in a few short months, lost both father and mother, and he probably felt the tie between him and his mother's brother to be stronger than in former times. Had not his mother often bid him remember that he came of the noble race of Dudley, and that he bore their crest with that of the Sidneys—a proud distinction.

If there had been jealousy in the Earl's heart when he saw his nephew rising so rapidly to a foremost place in the esteem of all men—a place which, with all his brilliant gifts, he secretly felt he never had filled—it was subdued now.

He did not grudge him the praise his splendid achievement awoke, and, in his despatch to the English Court, he gave the whole credit of the capture of Axel to his nephew.

The Earl always took care to have the room he inhabited, whether for a longer or a shorter time, luxuriously furnished.

If the word 'comfortable' does not apply to the appointments of those days, there was abundance of grandeur in fine tapestry hangings, in soft-cushioned seats, and in gold and silver plate on which the delicacies that were attainable were served.

Sir Philip and Lady Frances were the Earl's guests, with the young Earl of Essex and Mr Thomas Sidney. The elder brother, Robert, had been left in command at Flushing with the nine hundred trusty soldiers Sir Philip had left in the garrison there.

'What truth am I to attest?' Sir Philip asked, as he came up the room with his quick, elastic step.

His wife went forward to meet him, and, clinging to his arm, said,—

'Our good uncle was consoling me for those words in my father's letter.'

'And on what ground did I console you, Frances?' the Earl said. 'You give but half the truth; go on to say the rest.'

'Nay,' she said, hiding her face on Sir Philip's shoulder, as he put his arm tenderly round her. 'Nay, there is no need—'

'To tell him he is happy to possess a loyal wife? You are right, dear niece; he knows it full well.'

'Ay, to my joy and blessing,' was the answer. 'The favour of the Queen is, I do not deny, precious; but there are things more precious even than that. But, Frances, I come to tell you I think it is time we return to Flushing. We have had many bright days here, but I must soon be at the work I came hither to perform, and there is much to do, as you, my Lord, know full well.'

'Ay, surely, but we need not be rash, or in too great haste.'

'The investment of Doesburg is imperative,' Sir Philip said, 'and, if we wish to gain the mastery of the Yssel, this must be done. There are some matters which cause me great uneasiness. Stores are short and money greatly needed; nor do I put much faith in some of our allies. There is a mutinous feeling abroad amongst the troops.'

'You may be right,' the Earl said, 'but let us away to our supper, it must needs be served, and afterwards you shall take the viol, and chase away any needless fears by your sweet music.'

The Earl was always ready to put away any grave or serious matter, and Sir Philip was often hampered by the difficulty he found in bringing his uncle to the point on any question of importance.

When Sir Philip and Lady Frances were alone together that evening, he seemed more than usually grave and even sad.

'Are you grieved, Philip, about the Queen's displeasure? As soon as she hears of Axel she will sure cover you with honours.'

'Nay, sweetheart, it is not over this matter that I am brooding. Concern for you is pressing most.'

'For me! But I am merry and well.'

'Will you choose to remain here at Arnhem or return to Flushing with me? A sore struggle must ensue before long, and Zutphen will be besieged. I have been meditating whether or not I ought to send you and our babe under safe convoy to England.'

'No—oh, no! I would fain stay with you—near you—especially now. My ladies take good care of me, and little madam Elizabeth. She is well and hearty, and so am I; do not send us away from you!'

'It shall be as you wish, dear love,' was the answer; 'though, I fear, you will see but little of me. I have much to occupy me. But I will come to you for rest, dear heart, and I shall not come in vain.'

In all the events and chances of war, Sir Philip did not forget his servants; and he had been greatly concerned at the wound Humphrey had received, which had been slow to heal, and had been more serious than had at first been supposed. Before leaving Arnhem, Sir Philip went to the house of Madam Gruithuissens, whither Humphrey had been conveyed when able to leave the room in the quarters allotted to Sir Philip's retainers, where he was nursed and tended by Mary Gifford and his kind and benevolent hostess.

Humphrey had chafed against his enforced inaction, and was eager to be allowed to resume his usual duties. It was evident that he was still unfit for this; and Sir Philip entirely supported Madam Gruithuissens when she said it would be madness for him to attempt to mount his horse while the wound was unhealed and constantly needed care.

It was the evening before Sir Philip left Arnhem that he was met in the square entry of Madam Gruithuissens' house by Mary Gifford. She had been reading to Humphrey, and had been trying to divert his mind from the sore disappointment which the decision that he was to stay in Arnhem had occasioned him. But Humphrey, like most masculine invalids, was very hard to persuade, or to manage, and Mary, feeling that his condition was really the result of his efforts to save her boy and bring him to her, was full of pity for him, and self-reproach that she had caused him so much pain and vexation.

'How fares it with my good esquire, Mistress Gifford?' Sir Philip asked, as he greeted Mary.

'Indeed, sir, but ill; and I fear that to prevent his joining your company may hurt him more than suffering him to have his way. He is also greatly distressed that he could not prosecute inquiries at Axel for my child. In good sooth, Sir Philip, I have brought upon my true friend nought but ill. I am ofttimes tempted to wish he had never seen me.'

'Nay, Mistress Gifford, do not indulge that wish. I hold to the faith that the love of one who is pure and good can but be a boon, whether or not possession of that one be denied or granted.'

'But, sir, you know my story—you know that between me and Master Ratcliffe is a dividing wall which neither can pass.'

'Yes, I know it,' Sir Philip said; 'but, Mistress Gifford, take courage. The wall may be broken down and his allegiance be rewarded at last.'

'Yet, how dare I wish or pray that so it should be, sir? No; God's hand is heavy upon me—bereft of my boy, and tossed hither and thither as a ship on a stormy sea. All that is left for me is to bow my head and strive to say, "God's will be done."'

It was seldom that Mary Gifford gave utterance to her inmost thoughts; seldom that she confessed even to herself how deeply rooted in her heart was her love for Humphrey Ratcliffe. She never forgot, to her latest day, the look of perfect sympathy—yes, of understanding, which Sir Philip Sidney bent on her as he took her hand in his, and, bending over it, kissed it reverently.

'May God have you in His holy keeping, Mistress Gifford, and give you strength for every need.'

'He understands me,' Mary said, as she stood where he left her, his quick steps sounding on the tiled floor of the long corridor which opened from the square lobby. 'He understands, he knows; for has he not tasted of a like cup bitter as mine?'

Mary Gifford was drawing her hood more closely over her face, preparing to return to Master Gifford's house, when she saw a man on the opposite side of the street who was evidently watching her.

Her heart beat fast as she saw him crossing over to the place where she stood on the threshold of the entry to Madam Gruithuissens' house.

She quickened her steps as she turned away in the direction of Master Gifford's house, but she felt a hand laid on her arm.

'I am speaking to one Mistress Gifford, methinks.'

'Yes, sir,' Mary said, her courage, as ever, rising when needed. 'What is your business with me?'

'I am sent on an errand by one you know of as Ambrose Gifford—called by us Brother Ambrosio. He lies sick unto death in a desolate village before Zutphen, and he would fain see you ere he departs hence. There is not a moment to lose; you must come at once. I have a barge ready, and we can reach the place by water.'

Mary was still hurrying forward, but the detaining grasp grew firmer.

'If I tell you that by coming you will see your son, will you consent?'

'My son! my boy!' Mary exclaimed. 'I would traverse the world to find him, but how am I to know that you are not deceiving me.'

'I swear by the blessed Virgin and all the Saints I am telling you the truth. Come!'

'I must seek counsel. I must consider; do not press me.'

'Your boy is lying also in the very jaws of death. A consuming fever has seized many of our fraternity. Famine has resulted in pestilence. When I left the place where Brother Ambrosio and the boy lie, it was doubtful which would depart first. The rites of the Holy Church have been administered, and the priest, who would fain shrive Brother Ambrosio, sent me hither, for confession must be made of sins, ere absolution be bestowed. If you wish to see your son alive you must not hesitate. It may concern you less if I tell you that he who was your husband may have departed unabsolved through your delay.'

The twilight was deepening, and there were but few people in this quarter of the town. Mary hesitated no longer, and, with an uplifting of heart for the strength Sir Philip's parting blessing had invoked, she gathered the folds of her cloak round her, pulled the hood over her face, and saying, 'Lead on, I am ready,' she followed her guide through some narrow lanes leading to the brink of the water, where a barge was lying, with a man at the prow, evidently on the watch for their coming.

Not a word was spoken as Mary entered the barge, and took her seat on one of the benches laid across it, her guide leaving her unmolested and retiring to the further end of the vessel.

There was no sound but the monotonous splash of the oars, and their regular beat against the edge of the boat, as the two men pulled out into the wider part of the river.

Above, the stars were coming out one by one, and the wide stretch of low meadow-land and water lay in the purple haze of gathering shadows like an unknown and undiscovered country, till it was lost in the overarching canopy of the dim far-off heavens.

Mary Gifford felt strangely indifferent to all outward things as she sat with her hands tightly clasped together under her cloak, and in her heart only one thought had room—that she was in a few short hours to clasp her boy in her arms.

So over-mastering was this love and hungry yearning of the mother for her child, that his condition—stricken by fever, and that of his father lying at the very gates of death—were almost forgotten.

'If only he knows my arms are round him,' she thought; 'if only I can hear his voice call me mother, I will die with him content.'

After a few hours, when there were lines of dawn in the eastern sky, Mary felt the barge was being moored to the river bank; and her guide, rising from his seat, came towards her, gave her his hand and said,—

'We have now to go on foot for some distance, to the place where your son lies. Are you able for this?'

For Mary was stiff and cramped with her position in the barge for so long a time, and she would have fallen as she stepped out, had not one of the watermen caught her, saying,—

'Steady, Madam! steady!'

After a few tottering steps, Mary recovered herself, and said,—

'The motion of walking will be good for me; let us go forward.'

It was a long and weary tramp through spongy, low-lying land, and the way seemed interminable.

At last, just as the sun was sending shafts of light across river and swamp—making them glow like burnished silver, and covering every tall spike of rush and flag with diamonds—a few straggling cottages or huts came in sight.

A clump of pollards hid the cluster of buildings which formed the nucleus of the little hamlet, till they were actually before a low, irregular block of cottages, and at the door of one of these Mary's guide stopped.

'A few of our brethren took refuge here after the taking of Axel and the burning of our habitation there. We are under the protection of the Duke of Parma, who is advancing with an army for the relief of Zutphen, and will, as we believe, drive from before us the foes of the Holy Church.'

As they passed under the low doorway into a narrow entry paved with clay, Mary's guide said,—

'Tarry here, while I find what has passed in my absence.'

Mary was not left long in suspense.

The man presently returned, and, beckoning her, said,—

'Come, without delay!'

Mary found herself in a low, miserably furnished room on the ground-floor, where, in the now clear light of the bright summer morning, Ambrose Gifford lay dying.

The 'large, cruel, black eyes,' as Lucy Forrester had called them long ago, were dim now, and were turned with pitiful pleading upon the wife he had so grievously injured.

The priest stood by, and signed to Mary to kneel and put her face near her husband, that she might hear what he had to say.

As she obeyed, the hood fell back from her head, and a ray of sunshine caught the wealth of her rich chestnut hair and made an aureole round it. The grey streaks, which sorrow rather than years, had mingled amongst the bronze locks, shone like silver. She took the long, wasted hand in hers, and, in a low, clear voice, said,—

'I am here, Ambrose! what would you say to me?'

'The boy!' he gasped; 'fetch hither the boy!'

One of the Brothers obeyed the dying man's request, and from a pallet at the farther end of the room he brought the boy, whose cheeks were aflame with fever, as he lay helpless in the Brother's arms.

'Here, Ambrose,' the dying father said—'this—this is your mother; be a good son to her.'

Often as Mary Gifford had drawn a picture in her own mind of this possible meeting with her son, so long delayed, such a meeting as this had never been imagined in her wildest dreams.

'Thus, then, I make atonement,' the unhappy man said. 'Take him, Mary, and forgive it all.'

'Yes,' Mary said, as the boy was laid on the pallet at his father's feet, and his mother clasped him close to her side. 'Yes, I forgive—'

'All?' he said. 'All?'

'As I pray God to be forgiven,' she said, womanly pity for this forlorn ending of a misspent life thrilling in her voice, as hot tears coursed one another down her pale sweet face. 'Yes,' she repeated, 'all! Ambrose.'

'One thing more. Did I murder Humphrey Ratcliffe? Does that sin lie on my soul?'

'No, thank God!' Mary said. 'He lives; he was cruelly wounded, but God spared his life.'

There was silence now. The priest bid Mary move from the bed, and let him approach; but, before she did so, she bent over her husband and said,—

'Have you gone to the Saviour of the world for forgiveness through His precious blood, Ambrose? He alone can forgive sins.'

'I know it! I know it!' was the reply.

But the priest interfered now.

'Withdraw, my daughter, for the end is near.'

Then Mary, bending still lower, pressed a kiss upon the forehead, where the cold dews of death were gathering, and, turning towards her boy, she said,—

'Where shall I take him? Where can I go with him, my son, my son?'

There was something in Mary's self-restraint and in the pathetic tones of her voice, which moved those who stood around to pity as she repeated,—

'Where can I find a refuge with my child? I cannot remain here with him.'

One of the Brothers raised Ambrose again in his arms, and saying, 'Follow me,' he carried him to a small chamber on the upper floor, where he laid him down on a heap of straw covered with an old sacking, and said in English,—

'This is all I can do for you. Yonder room whence we came is kept for those stricken with the fever. Two of them died yesterday. We were burned out of house and home, and our oratory sacked and destroyed at Axel. We fled hither, and a troop of the Duke's army is within a mile to protect us.'

'Is there no leech at hand, no one to care for my child?'

'There was one here yester eve. He is attached to the troop I speak of, and has enow to do with the sick there. Famine and moisture have done their work, and God knows where it will end. There is a good woman at a small homestead not a mile away. She has kept us from starving, and, like many of the Hollanders, has a kind heart. I will do my best to get her to befriend you, Mistress, for I see you are in a sorry plight.'

'Even water to wet his lips would be a boon. I pray you fetch water,' she entreated.

The man disappeared, and presently returned with a rough pitcher of water and a flagon in which, he said, was a little drink prepared from herbs by the kindly Vrouw he had spoken of.

'I will seek her as quickly as other claims permit,' he said. And then Mary was left alone with her boy.

The restlessness of fever was followed by a spell of utter exhaustion, but the delirious murmurs ceased, and a light of consciousness came into those large, lustrous eyes, by which Mary knew this was indeed her son.

Otherwise, what a change from the rosy, happy child of seven, full of life and vigour, to the emaciated boy of twelve, whose face was prematurely old, and, unshaded by the once abundant hair, which had been close cropped to his head, looked ghostly and unfamiliar.

Still, he was hers once more, and she took off the ragged black gown, which had been the uniform of the scholars of the Jesuit school, and was now only fit for the fire, and taking off her own cloak, she wrapped him in it, bathed his face with water, put the herb cordial to his lips, and then, setting herself on an old chair, the only furniture in the tumbledown attic, she raised Ambrose on her knees, and, whispering loving words and prayers over him, hungered for a sign of recognition.

Evidently the poor boy's weary brain was awakened by some magnetic power to a consciousness that some lost clue of his happy childhood had been restored to him.

As his head lay against his mother's breast the rest there was apparently sweet.

He sighed as if contented, closed his eyes and slept.

Mary dare not move or scarcely breathe, lest she should disturb the slumber in which, as she gazed upon his face, the features of her lost child seemed to come out with more certain likeness to her Ambrose of past years.

For a smile played round the scarlet lips, and the long, dark fringe of the lashes resting on his cheeks, brought back the many times in the old home when she had seen them shadow the rounded rosy cheeks of his infant days.

A mother's love knows no weariness, and, as the hours passed and Ambrose still slept, Mary forgot her aching back and arms, her forlorn position in that desolate attic, even the painful ordeal she had gone through by her husband's dying bed—forgot everything but the joy that, whether for life or death, her boy was restored to her.

At last Ambrose stirred, and the smile faded from his lips. He raised his head and gazed up into the face bending over him.

'I dreamed,' he faltered; 'I dreamed I saw my mother—my mother.' He repeated the word with a feeble cry—my mother; 'but it's only a dream. I have no mother but the blessed Virgin, and she—she is so far, far away, up in Heaven.'

'Ambrose, my sweetheart, my son!' Mary said gently. 'I am not far away; I am here! Your own mother.'

'It's good of you to come down from Heaven, mother; take me—take me back with you. I am so—so weary—weary; and I can't say all the Latin prayers to you; I can't.'

'Ambrose,' poor Mary said, 'you need say no more Latin prayers; you are with me, your own mother, on earth.'

The wave of remembrance grew stronger, and, after a moment's pause, Ambrose said,—

'Ned brought me two speckled eggs. The hawk caught the poor little bird; the cruel hawk. Where am I? Ave Maria, ora pro nobis.'

'Say rather, dear child, "Dear Father in heaven, bless me, and keep me."'

'Yes, yes; that is the prayer I said by—'

'Me—me, your own mother.'

The long-deferred hope was at last fulfilled, and Mary Gifford tasted the very fruit of the tree of life, as Ambrose, with full consciousness, gazed long and earnestly at her, and said,—

'Yes, you are my mother, my own mother; not a dream.'

'Ah! say it again, my child, my child.'

'My own mother,' the boy repeated, raising his thin hand and stroking his mother's face, where tears were now running down unchecked, tears of thankfulness; such as, for many a long year, she had never shed.

With such bliss the stranger cannot intermeddle; but mothers who have had a child restored to them from the very borders of the unseen land will know what Mary Gifford felt.