The King's Achievement. Robert Hugh Benson

in one corner, with his crucifix and beads on a little table beside it, and his narrow window looked out through eleven feet of wall towards the Court and the White Tower. His books, too, which his servant, John Wood, had brought from Chelsea, and which had not yet been taken from him, stood about the room, and several lay on the table among his papers, at which he was writing when Ralph was admitted by the warder.

      "I am very glad to see you, Mr. Torridon," he said, "I knew you would not forget an old friend, even though he could not take your counsel. I daresay you have come to give it me again, however."

      "If I thought you would take it," began Ralph.

      "But I will not," said More smiling, "no more than before. Sit down, Mr.

       Torridon."

      Ralph had come at Cromwell's suggestion, and with a very great willingness of his own, too. He knew he could not please Beatrice more than by visiting her friend, and he himself was pleased and amused to think that he could serve his master's interests from one side and his own from another by one action.

      He talked a little about the oath again, and mentioned how many had taken it during the last week or two.

      "I am pleased that they can do it with a good conscience," observed More. "And now let us talk of other matters. If I would not do it for my daughter's sake, who begged me, I would not do it for the sake of both the Houses of Parliament, nor even, dear Mr. Torridon, for yours and Master Cromwell's."

      Ralph saw that it was of no use, and began to speak of other things. He gave him news of Chelsea.

      "They are not very merry there," he said, "and I hardly suppose you would wish them to be."

      "Why not?" cried More, with a beaming face, "I am merry enough. I would not be a monk; so God hath compelled me to be one, and treats me as one of His own spoilt children. He setteth me on His lap and dandleth me. I have never been so happy."

      He told Ralph presently that his chief sorrow was that he could not go to mass or receive the sacraments. The Lieutenant, Sir Edward Walsingham, who had been his friend, had told him that he would very gladly have given him liberties of this kind, but that he dared not, for fear of the King's displeasure.

      "But I told him," said More, "not to trouble himself that I liked his cheer well enough as it was, and if ever I did not he was to put me out of his doors."

      After a little more talk he showed Ralph what he was writing. It was a treatise called a "Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation."

      "It is to persuade myself," he said, "that I am no more a prisoner than I was before; I know I am, but sometimes forget it. We are all God's prisoners."

      Ralph glanced down the page just written and was astonished at its good humour.

      "Some prisoner of another gaol," he read, "singeth, danceth in his two fetters, and feareth not his feet for stumbling at a stone; while God's prisoner, that hath but his one foot fettered by the gout, lieth groaning on a couch, and quaketh and crieth out if he fear there would fall on his foot no more than a cushion."

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      Ralph went straight up the river from the Tower to Chelsea to take them news of the prisoner, and was silent and moody as he went. He had been half touched and half enraged by More's bearing—touched by his simplicity and cheerfulness and enraged by his confidence in a bad cause.

      Mrs. Alice More behaved as usual when he got there: she had a genius for the obvious; commented on the weariness of living in one room, the distress at the thought that one was fastened in at the will of another; deplored the plainness of the prison fare, and the folly of her husband in refusing an oath that she herself and her children and the vast majority of the prominent persons in England had found so simple in accepting. She left nothing unsaid.

      Finally, she apologized for the plainness of her dress.

      "You must think me a slattern, Mr. Torridon, but I cannot help it. I have not the heart nor the means, now that my man is in prison, to do better."

      And her solemn eyes filled with tears.

      When he had given the news to the family he went aside from the group in the garden to where Beatrice Atherton was sitting below the Jesu tree, with work on her lap.

      He had noticed as he talked that she was sitting there, and had raised his voice for her benefit. He fancied, and with a pleasure at the delicate instinct, that she did not wish to appear as intimately interested in the news from the Tower as those who had a better right to be. He was always detecting now faint shades in her character, as he knew her better, that charmed and delighted him.

      She was doing some mending, and only glanced up and down again without ceasing or moving, as Ralph stood by her.

      "I thought you never used the needle," he began in a moment.

      "It is never too late to mend," she said, without the faintest movement.

      Ralph felt again an odd prick of happiness. It gave him a distinct thrill of delight that she would make such an answer and so swiftly; and at such a time, when tragedy was round her and in her heart, for he knew how much she loved the man from whom he had just come.

      He sat down on the garden chair opposite, and watched her fingers and the movements of her wrist as she passed the needle in and out, and neither spoke again till the others had dispersed.

      "You heard all I said?" said Ralph at last.

      She bowed her head without answering.

      "Shall I go and bring you news again presently?"

      "If you please," she said.

      "I hope to be able to do some little things for him," went on Ralph, dropping his eyes, and he was conscious that she momentarily looked up.

      —"But I am afraid there is not much. I shall speak for him to Master

       Cromwell and the Lieutenant."

      The needle paused and then went on again.

      Ralph was conscious of an extraordinary momentousness in every word that he said. He was well aware that this girl was not to be wooed by violence, but that he must insinuate his mind and sympathies delicately with hers, watching for every movement and ripple of thought. He had known ever since his talk with Margaret Roper that Beatrice was, as it were, turned towards him and scrutinising him, and that any mistake on his part, however slight, might finally alienate her. Even his gestures, the tones of his voice, his manner of walking, were important elements. He knew now that he was the kind of person who might be acceptable to her—or rather that his personality contained one facet that pleased her, and that he must be careful now to keep that facet turned towards her continually at such an angle that she caught the flash. He had sufficient sense, not to act a part, for that, he knew, she would soon discover, but to be natural in his best way, and to use the fine instincts that he was aware of possessing to tell him exactly how she would wish him to express himself. It would be a long time yet, he recognised, before he could attain his final object; in fact he was not perfectly certain what he wanted; but meanwhile he availed himself of every possible opportunity to get nearer, and was content with his progress.

      He was sorely tempted now to discuss Sir Thomas's position and to describe his own, but he perceived from her own aloofness just now that it would seem a profanity, so he preserved silence instead, knowing that it would be eloquent to her. At last she spoke again, and there was a suggestion of a tremor in her voice.

      "I suppose you can do nothing for him really? He must stay in the

       Tower?"

      Ralph threw out his hands, silently, expostulating.

      "Nothing?" she said again, bending over her work.

      Ralph stood up, looking down at her, but made no answer.

      "I—I would do anything," she said deliberately, "anything, I think, for the man—" and then broke off abruptly.

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