Part 58 (1/2)
”I dared not show them to you the last time you were here,” he said, ”and there was no need; but now there must be no delay. I have lately made some more, too. Now here is one,” he said, stopping before the great carved mantelpiece in the hall.
He looked round to see that no servant was in the room, and then, standing on a settee before the fire, touched something above, and a circular hole large enough for a man to clamber through appeared in the midst of the tracery.
”There,” he said, ”and you will find some cured ham and a candle, with a few dates within, should you ever have need to step up there--which, pray G.o.d, you may not.”
”What is the secret?” asked Anthony, as the tracery swung back into place, and his host stepped down.
”Pull the third roebuck's ears in the coat of arms, or rather push them.
It closes with a spring, and is provided with a bolt. But I do not recommend that refuge unless it is necessary. In winter it is too hot, for the chimney pa.s.ses behind it; and in summer it is too oppressive, for there is not too much air.”
At the end of the corridor that led in the direction of the little old rooms where Anthony had slept in his visit, Mr. Buxton stopped before the portrait of a kindly-looking old gentleman that hung on the wall.
”Now there is an upright old man you would say; and indeed he was, for he was my own uncle, and made a G.o.dly end of it last year. But now see what a liar I have made of him!”
Mr. Buxton put his hand behind the frame, and the whole picture opened like a door showing a s.p.a.ce within where three or four could stand.
Anthony stepped inside and his friend followed him, and after showing him some clothes hanging against the wall closed the picture after them, leaving them in the dark.
”Now see what a sharp-eyed old fellow he is too,” whispered his host.
Anthony looked where he was guided, and perceived two pinholes through which he could see the whole length of the corridor.
”Through the centre of each eye,” whispered his friend. ”Is he not shrewd and secret? And now turn this way.”
Anthony turned round and saw the opposite wall slowly opening; and in a moment more he stepped out and found himself in the lobby outside the little room where he had made the exercises six years ago. He heard a door close softly as he looked about him in astonishment, and on turning round saw only an innocent-looking set of shelves with a couple of books and a little pile of paper and packet of quills upon them.
”There,” said Mr. Buxton, ”who would suspect Tacitus his history and Juvenal his satires of guarding the pa.s.sage of a Christian ecclesiastic fleeing for his life?”
Then he showed him the secret, how one shelf had to be drawn out steadily, and the nail in another pressed simultaneously, and how then the entire set of shelves swung open.
Then they went back and he showed him the spring behind the frame of the picture.
”You see the advantage of this,” he went on: ”on the one side you may flee upstairs, a treasonable skulking ca.s.socked jack-priest with the lords and the commons and the Queen's Majesty barking at your heels; and on the other side you may saunter down the gallery without your beard and in a murrey doublet, a friend of Mr. Buxton's, taking the air and wondering what the devil all the clamouring be about.”
Then he took him downstairs again and showed him finally the escape of which he was most proud--the entrance, designed in the cellar-staircase, to an underground pa.s.sage from the cellars, which led, he told him, across to the garden-house beyond the lime-avenue.
”That is the pride of my heart,” he said, ”and maybe will be useful some day; though I pray not. Ah! her Grace and her honest Council are right.
We Papists are a crafty and deceitful folk, Father Anthony.”
The four grew very intimate during those few weeks; they had many memories and a.s.sociations in common on which to build up friends.h.i.+p, and the aid of a common faith and a common peril with which to cement it. The gracious beauty of the house and the life at Stanfield, too, gilded it all with a very charming romance. They were all astonished at the easy intimacy with which they behaved, one to another.
Mary Corbet was obliged to return to her duties at Court at the beginning of September; and she had something of an ache at her heart as the time drew on; for she had fallen once more seriously in love with Isabel. She said a word of it to Mr. Buxton. They were walking in the lime-avenue together after dinner on the last day of Mary's visit.
”You have a good chaplain,” she said; ”what an honest lad he is! and how serious and recollected! Please G.o.d he at least may escape their claws!”
”It is often so,” said Mr. Buxton, ”with those wholesome out-of-door boys; they grow up into such simple men of G.o.d.”
”And Isabel!” said Mary, rustling round upon him as she walked. ”What a great dame she is become! I used to lie on her bed and kick my heels and laugh at her; but now I would like to say my prayers to her. She is somewhat like our Lady herself, so grave and serious, and yet so warm and tender.”