IT was the town of Maastricht, and the 20th day of October, 1576. Maastricht, which had declared for the Prince of Orange and driven out the Spaniards, had just been re-taken by these brave but cruel and relentless foes. Brava though they were, however, they had been obliged to resort to an extraordinary stratagem to vanquish the desperate resistance of the citizens. They had taken possession of the suburb of Wÿk, but there was still, between them and the city, a bridge strongly fortified, and exposed to the fire of the defenders. In order to cross it in safety, each Spaniard took in his arms a Flemish woman from the suburb, and held her before him as he marched on. The men of Maastricht could not fire upon their own flesh and blood; so, protected by these living shields, the Spaniards reached the bridge gate, which soon yielded to their prowess. Another gate in the meantime had been set on fire; and the town was entered at once upon two sides.
For the scenes that followed ‘painting has no pencil and poetry no pen.’ Happily, in the imagination of most of us the material even to form pictures of them does not exist. Whatever we may hear or read, still in soul we ‘stand afar off.’ All that comes to us is a confused impression of shrieks and wailings and moans of the dying, of streets stained with blood, of hurrying footsteps of those who flee, and shouts and threats and brandished weapons of their pursuers.
These, and horrors far worse—horrors unspeakable—filled Maastricht on that October day. But in one street, strewn with dead bodies, and crowded with fugitives, a solitary warrior stood at bay, bravely defending the door of a dwelling-house. He was evidently no citizen of Maastricht, but an officer in the regular army of the States, and he wore a scarf with the Orange colors. As yet he was unwounded, while three or four Spaniards lay dead at his feet. But half a score of others were pressing round him; his last shot was fired, and he had no time to reload. There was nothing to trust to but his sword; nothing to hope but that the Spaniards, tired out, might abandon that house full of women and children for an easier prey. He handled the sword right well; here—there—everywhere the bright steel flashed, cutting, thrusting, parrying—doing the work of both sword and shield. At last one of his many assailants succeeded in touching him. Blood flowed, staining the orange scarf, then with shouts of triumph they rushed upon him, and closed in. His sword broke; but he held the shattered remnant straight out with his strong right arm, while he prayed God to receive his soul. ‘For,’ thought he, ‘the end comes now!’
In that instant a voice reached him— ‘Edward!—Edward Wallingford!’ Then, from the same voice to the Spaniards, in a tone of authority— ‘Back, men! Back instantly! Leave that man to me. I claim him in the name of Holy Church. Respect this sacred sign!’ Unarmed, save with the crucifix which he held up high before them, a tall man in clerical garb pressed through the throng of infuriated soldiers, drunk with wine or blood, or both.
‘Austen—cousin!’ faltered Edward in a choking gasp.
‘Give me that sword,’ said the other in English, holding out his hand to receive the token of submission.
But Edward, though his strength was failing him, still held it fast. ‘For God’s sake, cousin, protect the helpless people in there. Children and women!’ he gasped out.
‘Yes, yes—so far as I can. But, first to save thee.’ He raised his voice, and turning to the Spaniards, pointed up the street. Go on there, my sons, and take the first turn to the right. You will find shops, goldsmiths’, silversmiths’, mercers’, and the like. Plunder there to your heart’s content. Here is naught to be had save that which leaves the purse light and the conscience heavy.’ Then in English to Edward: ‘The sword, man, the sword! How can I possibly protect thee, save as my prisoner?’
Edward had no choice but to yield. As he gave up the shattered sword, he said: ‘If thou hast a man’s heart in thee, cousin, try to stop these horrors. For God’s sake!’
‘I will—nay, I am—so far as I can. But what would you have? They are mad with rage, and wine, and want of pay. And they are Spaniards, not Englishmen. But the first thing now is to save you. Come with me.’
‘And the inmates of this house, whom I have sworn to defend?’
‘I will do my best for them. In that dress and with that scarf you only add to their dangers. Come!’
Wallingford by this time was growing faint, he had only strength left to follow his protector to a convent close at hand, and, what did not always happen, saved as yet by its sacred character from the violence of the Spaniards. His cousin led him to an empty cell. ‘I will send a surgeon,’ he said, ‘if I can find one, to look to thy wound, which I trust is not grievous.’
‘Nay, cousin, it is slight. See rather to the town.’
‘That I will, to the utmost of my power. And when I can I will return to thee.’
‘Go then, and God be with thee!’ said Edward heartily.
Austen turned to go; but turning back again, held out his hand to his cousin. In another moment the two were embracing like the brothers they had been in boyhood. Then he withdrew, and Edward heard him lock the door, and take out the key.
The surgeon had come and gone, night had fallen, and the cell was in profound darkness ere he returned. But he came at last, bearing in his hand a lamp, and followed by a lay brother carrying dishes, platters, and other requisites for supper.
‘Didst think I had forgotten thee?’ he asked cheerfully. ‘But what of the town?’ was Edward’s eager question. ‘Is the slaughter stayed?’
Austen shrugged his shoulders. ‘I, and others, have been doing our best to restore order,’ he said. ‘But the men would not listen to their own officers even, if they tried to stop them. They are frenzied with lack of pay, with thirst for gold, for blood—and remember also their zeal for the Faith.’
‘What sort of zeal?’ asked Edward with bitter contempt. ‘And what sort of Faith?’
‘Zeal, I own, not according to knowledge,’ Austen allowed. ‘And moreover, as I told thee before, they are Spaniards, not honest, law-abiding Englishmen. However, be thou comforted, dear Ned, as I used to call thee in the old days. Things are growing quiet now. The Burghers, those left alive of them, will be protected.’
‘Oh, Austen, Austen! It is the Devil’s work you and yours are doing here.’
‘The Devil’s work indeed is being done,’ said Austen, ‘Still, I take it, it is not the soldiers of the Faith and of the King who are doing it, but the misguided heretics who have cast off both. Let us not begin to argue though, almost before we have met. Tell me of my father and my mother. Are they both alive? And Margery? and Thomas?’
‘All are as you left them. Save that I hear Margery is shortly to be married to young Edmund Stanhope, whom you remember.’
‘Dost ever see them, Ned?’
‘I saw them often; until I left England, about two years ago. And I have since heard from my father of their welfare.’
‘Thy father, Ned—is he well and prosperous? I pray without ceasing for his welfare—and his conversion. Never, never can I forget what he did for me, what he saved me from. Wherefore be of good cheer, cousin; for there shall not a hair of his son’s head fail to the ground, if I can hinder. Eat and drink; I have come to sup with thee, for old sake’s sake.’
They sat down to the table, upon which the lay brother had placed a very comfortable meal, white bread, a fat capon, a neat’s tongue, and good red wine.
Austen said a Latin grace, and Edward began to partake with a good appetite of the food he greatly needed. His wound was not troublesome; and, in spite of the horrors he had witnessed, his spirits could not but revive under the influence of his cousin’s kindness. They were more to each other indeed than ordinary cousins. Not only had their fathers been brothers, but their mothers also were sisters. Although Edward’s father had adopted the new faith, while Austen’s adhered to the old, the two families had grown up together in brotherly intimacy. The first break in their intercourse had been when Austen’s father sent him, for his education, to the Jesuits at Treves; and although, upon his return to England, it had been resumed for a little, it was soon brought to an end under terrible circumstances. Austen was implicated in one of the many plots for the assassination of Queen Elizabeth. Suspicion fell upon him, and a warrant was out for his apprehension. He would certainly have been taken, had not his uncle, whose loyalty was above suspicion, concealed him in his house, and eventually, at great expense and some risk to himself, sent him abroad. His gratitude was great: and the greater because he knew that, if arrested, he could only expect the most rigorous treatment.
Now he ministered with evident pleasure to the bodily wants of his cousin. ‘Dost remember,’ he asked, as he loaded his platter with capon— ‘how well that fowl tasted thou and I purloined and ate together after the Christmas Mumming, the year I went to Treves?’
‘Ay, do I. Stolen waters are sweet,’ Edward responded. ‘Not the first prank by many a one we shared together—though, woe’s me! it was the last.’
‘Not the first, sayest thou truly. It was a merry play we had—dost thou mind?—the Christmas Mumming before that, when we changed clothes with each other, and deceived our very fathers and mothers.’
‘Ay, and thy hair betrayed thee at last. It was then of lighter hue. But I would not change habits now with thee, cousin. Not with my good will,’ said Edward frankly.
‘For it is said in England, and I suppose it to be true, that thou hast become a Jesuit.’
‘It is not true,’ returned Austen gravely. ‘I have not so great an honor.’
‘But thou didst go back to them after thy—after leaving England?’
‘I went back to them, as I was bound to do, their humble and obedient pupil. Dost think it a light and easy thing to enter the Social of Jesus? In the years since then I have been passing through my novitiate. I served in the House of Primary Probation: then for two years in the Second Probation, learning to mortify the flesh— and oh, Ned, it is a hard lesson! Now I am an Indifferent.’
‘I would thou wert indifferent to the whole concern. It is not meet for honest Englishmen.’
‘That is thy prejudice, Edward: and prejudice, as usual, means ignorance. The “Indifferents,” I ought to explain, are those who are passing through the third grade, or class, in ascent to the suprema honor and felicity of full admission to the Order. If I use well the office of an Indifferent, I shall in due time become a simple Scholar, then a Scholar approved, next a Coadjutor, and finally, should God give me the Grace of Perseverance, I shall be admitted into the ranks of the Professed. Then indeed shall I be, that which I most desire, a dead man.’
‘Dear cousin, I hope not.’
‘Thou dost not understand me, Ned. To thee indeed I speak parables; for thine eyes are holden, that thou canst not see the mysteries of the spiritual life. That life, on the other side of it, means death—death to self with its reason and its affections, its hopes and fears, its joys and sorrows. Of us, who aspire to enter the Society of Jesus, nothing else is demanded—nothing less. And it is well. The dead are free. Released from all other claims, we have one suprema duty left, and one alone—the duty of obedience.’
‘Obedience? And unto whom?’ Edward asked.
‘Each one to his own superior, I to mine.’
‘And if your superior should require something contrary to the law of God?’
‘Impossible!’
‘But why?’
‘That which he commands becomes the law of God for me. He is responsible to God; I to him.’
‘I think to have read somewhat in Holy Scripture about the blind leading the blind; and both, the led as well as the leader, falling into the ditch,’ said Edward Walling-ford.
‘And the fact of your reading it there, where you have no business to read at all, proves you one of the blind yourself, hastening to the ditch under the guidance of your heretic teachers.’
‘My good cousin, you are begging the question: and that we were taught at Oxford is illogical.’
‘My dear Ned, thou art a bad theologian, but, I doubt not, an excellent soldier. Supposing two soldiers disputing of their duty—one would do this, the other that—a lance corporal comes by, and says, “Such and such are your captain’s orders!” That settles the question; they obey, or are shot as mutineers. Thus, what reason could never decide, authority settles at once and forever.’
‘True, but it must be rightful authority. We, too, admit the principle of authority. But we decline to take our orders save from the captain himself.’
Austen laughed. ‘I give that plan a single day to turn the best army in the world into a mutinous mob,’ he said. ‘You forget that authority may be delegated. And must.’
‘It must, in earthly affairs,’ said Edward, because no general, no captain, can be at once in all parts of the field, accessible to all. ‘Our Captain is,’ he added reverently. Austen crossed himself. ‘I think, Ned, thy temper is devout,’ he said with an air of condescension. ‘But thou dost stand in great need of enlightenment. That will come however, with good instruction and the grace of God.’
‘How canst thou possibly think, cousin,’ Edward resumed with earnestness, ‘that thy superiors required nothing wrong, or contrary to the law of God, when they put thee, an innocent youth, a mere boy indeed, upon that infamous business that went so near costing thee thy life?’
‘Hold there, Ned, and keep thy tongue from ill words, Not “infamous,” an’ it please thee. Nor did they put me upon it; I undertook it of my own proper motion. And what did I and my marrows more than you, and your lawless Sea Beggars, and your traitorous Prince of Orange? We, like you, tried to overthrow a government hostile to our Faith. With this difference, and a great one. Elizabeth Tudor had been deposed, and her subjects absolved from their allegiance by lawful authority.’
‘Lawful authority! Do you mean the Pope’s? Not worth this button on my doublet!’ said Edward.
‘You are a captive, or I should not listen to such words from your lips!’ returned Austen, controlling himself with an effort.
‘I crave thy pardon, if I have been over-bold. But in sooth thou hast made me forget I was a captive. And my words are true, for all that. As to the poor Christians of these provinces, who have taken up arms against the King of Spain, prithee what wouldest thou have them to do? Seeing that in any case they were doomed to die, it was surely better for them to die fighting, than to be slaughtered like sheep.’
‘But why doomed to die? They had only to forsake their heresy, and live.’
‘Cousin, if some one came and bade you, on pain of Instant death, believe something which you knew to be contrary to actual fact—such, for instance, as that this town were Brussels, not Maastricht—could you do’ it, or could you not?’
‘If he who bade me do it were my lawful superior, I could,’ Austen answered stoutly.
Edward gazed at him in sorrowful amazement.
‘If after this fashion,’ he said at last, ‘you can throw away the reason God has given you, then indeed I can comprehend your share in that business which I must not call “infamous,” but of which at least I must needs may be Spanish, or Italian, or French, but of a surety it is not English.’
‘You mean, I suppose—’
‘You know very well what I mean, Austen, though your lips, which are still English, shrink from uttering the word assassination.’
‘That is not the name for it. Not the name that you—even you—would give to the soldier’s work, or the executioner’s.’
‘No; for the executioner does his duty at the bidding of the lawful magistrate; the soldier also, who besides risks his own life in fair fight. If he struck only in the dark, and when safe himself, I should call him what I call the assassin—coward.’
‘Wrong there—wrong utterly!’ cried Austen, with heightened color. ‘Anything else you will, but not coward, surely not coward! Was I coward—I, a lad of nineteen, when I braved—that which you know, that which your father saved me from—not death alone, but torture? —Edward, the laws of England against high treason are not written in rosewater.’
‘What laws against high treason are?’ asked Edward. ‘Suppose some fanatic, driven mad by persecution, chose to take a shot at the King of Spain, what do you think would be his fate? Such enterprises are so tempting to minds of a certain sort, there is good need to make them costly.’
A shade passed over the refined, sensitive face of Austen Wallingford.
‘That is why,’ he said, ‘I am so deeply grateful to thy good father, Ned. If I know myself, I do not fear death. “After that—no more that they can do.” But before it? It is what they can do before it that I shrink from—as yet. I fear that if it came to rack and pulley, and so on, I should go raving mad, deny my faith, and betray my brethren. But,’ he continued, rather to himself than to Edward, ‘know these fears are weak, foolish, faithless; and, God helping me, I will conquer them—I will triumph over the weakness of the flesh!’
He paused, seeing the astonished look in the face of Edward, who said:—
‘Why trouble yourself now about a danger that is past? Who wants to stretch you on the rack, cousin? If either of us are in danger of such experiences, ‘tis more likely I.’
‘Nay, nay; for the sake of what thy father did for me, ‘tis my care to protect thee. And I only mean,’ he added, recovering his calmness, ‘that I was not at that time prepared for martyrdom. I am infinitely thankful to have been spared a trial in which I should have certainly failed.’
‘Martyrdom!’ cried Edward indignantly. ‘Do you give that hallowed and glorious name to the penalty of—’
‘Hush!’ Austen quickly interrupted. ‘There are words best left unuttered between kinsmen and friends.’
‘As you will’ said Edward. ‘This only I will say. God who has hitherto protected that gracious and noble lady our Queen, and frustrated the many plots against her life, saved at that time both her and thee.’
‘I perceive, dear Ned, that argument would at this stage be useless,’ returned Austen, preserving his temper with an effort. ‘Best to wait until events have somewhat disposed thee to heed, or at least to hear the Truth. Meanwhile, is there any favor or kindness thou wouldest especially desire of me?’
This only, that I may remain with thee, on my parole or otherwise, in honorable custody, and that the Prince may be apprised of my capture, to take order for my exchange or ransom, according to the laws of war.
‘That will I do for thee. But there must be some delay ere thy case can be dealt with, and I must go back to-morrow to Treves. I shall take thee with me, as my guest rather than my prisoner.’
‘I thank thee, Austen. With thee I shall indeed be glad to remain. But, an’ it please thee, I had rather not go among the Jesuits.’
Austen laughed. ‘Prejudice again!’ he said, ‘Dost think that the reverend fathers are Anthropophagi, or cannibals, and will eat thee?’
‘No; but I think they will try to convert me by fair means or by foul.’
‘Fair means, I suppose, being thoroughly grounded in thy heresy, thou art not afraid of. Canst thou fear the other kind while I am with thee to protect thee?’
‘Wilt thou promise it, Austen?’
‘Yes; for thy father’s sake, and thine own.’ He laid his hand on that of Edward, whose fingers closed trustingly upon it.
The next day they set out for Treves together.
Of the two English youths, so like originally in person and in character, so different in training and in destiny, Austen was by nature the more nobly gifted. Both were brave and generous, and ‘of excellent parts,’ as the phrase then ran. But Austen had larger constructive and administrative abilities, more remarkable capacity for intense and sustained enthusiasm. He was also unusually sensitive and sympathetic. What he might have been if educated at Oxford instead of at Treves, it is impossible to say. What he was resulted from the fact that just as the thoughtful child was growing into the precocious boy, he was consigned, soul and body, to the care of the Jesuits.
It has been sometimes said of young souls that they are as wax to mold in the hands of their instructors. Austen’s soul was not so much like wax as like metal, soft and malleable in the fire of his youth, but capable of being hardened to a temper that would mock the hardness of steel, and refined and sharpened into a sword for the Cid Campeador, or a scimitar for Saladin.
They whose hands fashioned Austen Wallingford did their work well. They were amongst the ablest men of their age, and they ‘gave themselves continually unto this very thing.’ They aspired to mold him into an instrument which should combine the advantages of life with the immunities of death. The living can act, and think, and groom, can develop its powers and multiply its activities almost indefinitely. The dead, like the sword or the scimitar, can only be what it is, can only do what is done by it; but then, on the other hand, it cannot turn itself against its owner, refuse his bidding or transgress his wishes. In the pupil of the Jesuits the faculties were to be living, and cultivated to their uttermost, while the will was to be dead—in their own striking words ‘perinde ac cadaver’ — ‘like unto a corpse.’
But the will, ere it is killed, must be yielded. Young Austen gave up his joyfully to his teachers, going to the altar a willing sacrifice. From his earliest years he had been devoted passionately ‘to the Cause.’ He was a little child at the accession of Elizabeth; but he was able to remember the days of her predecessor, and his associations with them were very different from ours. We think of blood and anguish and Smithfield fires; he thought of decorated churches and stately services, of sweet music and fragrant incense, of the triumphs and glories of ‘the true Faith.’ He grew up to believe that Faith oppressed, and its adherents persecuted; and to pour all his young enthusiasm into dreams of its restoration. It stimulates enthusiasm wonderfully, in the young especially, to be in a minority, to be unpopular—even to be a little persecuted—not too much. The young English Catholic had the little, and had not the too much; unless, or until, he brought it upon himself by being rebel as well as Catholic.
For this further development, he was prepared by his instructors at Treves. They sent him back to England fired with zeal for the Faith, and only too ready to accept a subordinate, yet not unimportant, part in one of the many conspiracies to take off the Queen, and thus overthrow the Protestant Government.
This ‘taking off’ of persons whose existence hindered the Cause was an enterprise that had much to recommend it. It was short, simple, decisive—it was even merciful Austen’s instructors and inspirers (in these matters they inspired rather than instructed) breathed into his willing ear the very argument of Caiaphas: ‘It is expedient that one die, and that the whole nation perish not.’ Austen believed absolutely, profoundly, that the whole nation of the English was perishing; that every soul belonging to it, dying in heresy, was consigned to an eternity of torment. Can we wonder that a single life, such as that of Elizabeth Tudor, seemed to him in comparison as the small dust in the balance?
Nor did the contemplated deed lose in attractiveness, for such souls as his, because there shone beyond it the crown of martyrdom. This was the reward for which, from his very childhood, Austen had longed, almost passionately. Yet while he longed for the crown, his nervous, sensitive organization shrank in unspeakable terror from the cross; which indeed was likely, whether he succeeded or whether he failed, to prove a very sharp one. Desire and dread combined to give the subject a fatal fascination for him. His thoughts were playing round it continually; a state of things which his superiors, quite unknown to him, greatly encouraged.
When he returned to Treves, alter his escape from England, he made known his desire to enter, eventually, ‘the Society of Jesus.’ Neither welcomed nor forbidden, but kept under close and continual observation, he passed in due course through the various grades of the long and complicated Jesuit novitiate. When sent to Maastricht upon some errand or other, he was styled, as he told Edward, an ‘Indifferent.’
Severe and prolonged fasts, and other mortifications of the flash, were imposed upon him at this stage, and were borne joyfully. Owing to this experience, and to an imagination over-stimulated by the atmosphere in which he lived, he began to see visions and dream dreams. Ecstasies of devotion alternated with periods of mental and physical depression and suffering. He was like one shut up in a temple rich with gold and silver, glowing with painting and sculpture, and lit with the gleam of a hundred tapers; but from which the common light of day, the sunshine of God’s earth, has been rigidly excluded.
Had doors and windows been flung wide open to the sun, he might have read by its beams certain everlasting verities which the Bloom and the glow of his present surroundings conspired to hide from him. He might have seen that wrong can never be right; that crime can never be duty; and that no teaching which effaces the plain landmarks between good and evil, between righteousness and sin, can possibly come from the righteous God.
There is one place where His will can be learned without mistake or error, and that is at the feet of His Christ. But Austen sat instead at the feet of his own superior, who, he had been taught to believe, stood to him in the place of Christ. Without reserve and without suspicion he gave himself up to be poured like liquid metal into the mold which they prepared for him; and thus, when he met Edward, he was already far on the road to his destiny. What that destiny might be, he did not yet know, though perhaps he guessed. But he knew what it would require of him—and he bent all his energies to the task of preparation —faculties trained and developed and sharpened to the very uttermost, joined to a will ‘perinde ac cadaver.’