The idea appealed, the sack was ordered. But the red and blue bully was bully still. Aderhold would have sat quiet in his corner, awaiting the steaming stuff and planning to slip away as soon as might be after its coming. At the other end of the table had arisen a wordy war over some current city matter or other—so far as he was concerned the company might seem to be placated and attention drawn. He was conscious that the lawyer still watched him from the corner of his eye, but the rest of the dozen indulged in their own wiseacre wrangling. All, that is, but the red and blue bully. He still stared and swelled with animosity, and presently broke forth again. “‘Physician’! It may be so, but I do not believe it! As my name’s Anthony Mull, I believe you to be a Jesuit spy—”
The sack came at the moment and with it a diversion. Cups were filled, all drank, and the lawyer flung upon the board for discussion the growing use of tobacco, its merits and demerits. Then, with suddenness, the petty magistrate at the head of the table was found to be relating the pillorying that day, side by side, of a Popish recusant and a railing Banbury man or Puritan. All at table turned out to be strong Church of England men, zealous maintainers of the Act of Uniformity, jealous of even a smack of deviation toward Pope or Calvin. At the close of a moment of suspension, while all drank again, the red and blue bully, leaning forward, addressed the man of justice. “Good Master Pierce, regard this leech, so named, and put the question to him, will he curse Popery and all its works.”
It seemed, in truth, that this was Aderhold’s unlucky night. That, or there was something in the Queen’s declaration, there was something about him different, something that provoked in all these people antagonism. And yet he was a quiet man, of a behaviour so careful that it suggested a shyness or timidity beyond the ordinary. He was not ill-looking or villainous-looking—but yet, there it was! For all that he was indubitably of English birth, “Foreigner” was written upon him.
The present unluckiness was the being again involved in this contentious and noisy hour. He had been gathering himself together, meaning to rise with the emptying of the bowl, make his bow to the company, and quit the Cap and Bells. And now it seemed that he must stop to assure them that he was not of the old religion! Aderhold’s inner man might have faintly smiled. He felt the lawyer’s gaze upon him—a curious, even an apprehensive, gaze. The justice put the question portentously, all the table, save only the lawyer, leaning forward, gloating for the answer, ready to dart a claw forward at the least flinching. But Aderhold spoke soberly, with a quiet brow. “I do not hold with cursing, Master Justice. It is idle to curse past, present, or to come, for in all three a man but curses himself. But I am far removed from that faith, and that belief is become a strange and hostile one to me. I am no Papist.”
The bully struck the table with his fist. “As my name’s Anthony Mull, that’s not enough!”
And the justice echoed him with an owl-like look: “That’s not enough!”
A colour came into Aderhold’s cheek. “There is, my masters, no faith that has not in some manner served the world and given voice to what we were and are, good and bad. No faith without lives of beauty and grace. No faith without its garland. But since I am to clear myself of belonging to the old religion—then I will say that I abhor—as in a portion of myself, diseased, which I would have as far otherwise as I might—that I abhor in that faith all its cruelties past and present, its Inquisition, its torturers and savage hate, its wars and blood-letting and insensate strife, its falseness and cupidity and great and unreasonable pride, its King Know-No-More and its Queen Enquire-No-Further! I abhor its leasing bulls, its anathemas and excommunications, its iron portcullis dropped across the outward and onward road, its hand upon the throat of knowledge and its searing irons against the eyes of vision! I say that it has made a dogma of the childhood of the mind and that, or soon or late, there will stand within its portals intellectual death—”
The table blinked. “At least,” said the justice sagely, “you are no Papist!”
But the red and blue man would not be balked of his prey. “That’s round enough, but little enough as a true Churchman talks! You appear to me not one whit less one of us than you did before! Master Pierce, Master Pierce! if he be not a masked Jesuit, then is he a Marprelate man, a Banbury man, a snuffling, Puritan, holy brother! Examine him, Master Pierce! My name is not Mull, if he be not somehow pillory fruit—”
It seemed that they all hated a Puritan as much as a Papist. “Declare! Declare! Are you a Banbury Saint and a Brother? Are you Reformed, a Precisian, and a Presbyter? Are you John Calvin and John Knox?”
But Aderhold kept a quiet forehead. “A brother to any in the sense you mean—no. A saint—not I! A Calvinist?—No, I am no Calvinist.”
“Not enough! Not enough!”
Aderhold looked at them, bright-eyed. “Then I will say that Calvin burned Servetus. I will say that where they have had power to persecute they have persecuted! I will say that—”
Outside the Cap and Bells arose a great uproar. Whether it were apprentices fighting, or an issue of gentry and sword-play with—in either case—the watch arriving, or whether it were a fire, or news, perhaps, of the old Queen’s death—whatever it was it behooved the Cap and Bells to know the worst! All the revellers and disputers rose, made for the door, became dispersed. Aderhold snatched up his cloak and hat, laid a coin beside the empty malmsey cup, sent one regretful glance in the direction of the volume lying beside the great bowl, and quitted the Cap and Bells. In the street was a glare of light and the noise of running feet. The crowd appeared to be rushing toward Thames bank, some tall building upon it being afire. He let them go, and drawing his cloak about him, turned in the direction of his lodging.
He had not gone far when he felt himself touched on the shoulder. “Not so fast! A word with you, friend!—You’ve put me out of breath—”
It proved to be the lawyer who had befriended him. They were standing before some church. Wall and porch, it rose above them, dark and vacant. The lawyer looked about him, glanced along the steps and into the hollow of the porch. “Bare as is this land of grace!—Look you, friend, we know that it is allowable at times to do that in danger which we disavow in safety. Especially if we have great things in trust.—I marked you quickly enough for a man with a secret—and a secret more of the soul and mind than of worldly goods. Hark you! I’m as little as you one of the mass-denying crew we’ve left. What! a man may go in troublous times with the current and keep a still tongue—nay, protest with his tongue that he loves the current—else he’ll have a still tongue, indeed, and neither lands nor business, nor perhaps bare life! But when we recognize a friend—” He spoke rapidly, in a voice hardly above a whisper, a sentence or two further.
“You take me,” said Aderhold, “to be Catholic. You mistake; I am not. I spoke without mask.” Then, as the other drew back with an angry breath. “You were quick and kindly and saved me from that which it would have been disagreeable to experience. Will you let me say but another word?”
“Say on,” said the other thickly, “but had I known—”
The light from Thames bank reddening the street even here, they drew a little farther into the shadow of the porch. “I have travelled much,” said Aderhold, “and seen many men and beliefs, and most often the beliefs were strange to me, and I saw not how any could hold them. Yet were the people much what they were themselves, some kindly, some unkindly, some hateful, some filled with all helpfulness. I have seen men of rare qualities, tender and honourable women and young children, believe what to me were monstrous things. Everywhere I have seen that men and women may be better than the dogma that is taught them, seeing that what they think they believe is wrapped in all the rest of their being which believes no such thing. Both in the