“Yes, Anthony, I love thee, and one day I will be thy wife!”

The words seemed to set themselves to joyous music in the ears of Anthony Dalaber as he hastened homeward through the miry and darkening streets towards his lodging in St. Alban Hall.  He trod on air.  He regarded neither the drizzling rain overhead nor the mire and dirt of the unpaved streets.

He had come from Dr. Langton’s house.  He had heard Freda pronounce these words, which made her all his own.  For some months he had been feeding on hope.  He knew that she loved him up to a certain point.  But until today she had never openly declared herself.  Today he had ventured to plead his cause with a new fervour, and she had given him the answer his heart so craved.

“I love thee, Anthony; one day I will be thy wife!”

He could have cried aloud in his joy and triumph.

“My wife, my wife, my wife!  O blessed, blessed thought!  For her sake I will achieve all, I will dare all, I will win all.  I have talents ­they have told me so; I will use them might and main to win myself fame and renown.  I have friends; they will help me.  Has not Cole spoken ofttimes of what he hoped to do for me in the matter of some appointment later on, when my studies shall be finished here?  I have a modest fortune ­not great wealth; but it will suffice for the foundation on which to build.  Oh yes, fortune smiles sweetly and kindly upon me, and I will succeed for her sweet sake as well as for mine own.

“My Freda! my star! my pearl amongst women!  How can it be that she loves me?  Oh, it is a beautiful and gracious thing!  And truly do I believe that it is our faith which has drawn us together; for do we not both believe in the right of free conscience for every man, and the liberty to read for himself, and in his own tongue, the words of the holy Book of Life?  Do we not both long for the day when greed and corruption shall be banished from the church we both love, and she shall appear as a chaste virgin, without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, meet for the royal Bridegroom who waits for her, that He may present her spotless before His Father’s throne?”

Dalaber was quoting unconsciously from an address recently delivered in Dr. Randall’s house by Clarke to a select audience, who loved to listen to his words of hope and devotion.  Clarke’s spirit at such times would seem to soar into the heavenlies, and to uplift thither the hearts of all who heard him.  He spoke not of strife and warfare; he railed not against the prevailing abuses, as did others; he ever spoke of the church as the Holy Mother, the beloved of the Lord, the spouse of Christ; and prayed to see her purified and cleansed of all the defilement which had gathered upon her during her pilgrimage in this world, after the departure of her Lord into the heavens, that she might be fit and ready for her espousals in the fulness of time, her eyes ever fixed upon her living Head in the heavens, not upon earthly potentates or even spiritual rulers on this earth, but ever waiting and watching for His coming, who would raise her in glory and immortality to sit at His right hand for evermore.

Anthony had heard this discourse, and had been fired by it, and had seen how Freda’s eyes kindled, and how her breath came and went in the passion of her spiritual exaltation.  They were drawn ever closer and more closely together by their sympathy in these holy hopes and aspirations, and her heart had gradually become his, she hardly knew when or how.

But the troth plight had been given.  Dalaber could have sung aloud in the gladness of his heart.  She was his own, his very own; and what a life they would live together!  No cloud should ever touch their happiness, or mar their perfect concord.  They were one in body, soul, and spirit, and nothing could come between them since they had so united their lives in one.

It was very dark as he turned at last into the familiar doorway, and mounted the dim staircase towards his own room ­the lodging he and Hugh Fitzjames shared together.  But just now Fitzjames was absent, paying one of his frequent visits to the Langtons.  Dalaber had spoken to him there only a short while since, and he was therefore surprised to see a line of light gleaming out from under his door; for, since he was out, who else could be in possession of his room?

Opening the door hastily, he uttered a cry of surprise and welcome, and advanced with outstretched hands.

“Master Garret!  You have come!”

The small, keen-faced priest with the eyes of fire came out of the circle of lamplight and took the extended hands.

“I have come, Anthony Dalaber; I have come, as I said.  Have you a welcome for me, and for mine errand?”

“The best of welcomes,” answered Dalaber, without a moment’s hesitation; “I welcome you for your own sake, and for that of the cause in which we both desire to live, and, if need be, to die.”

Yet even as he spoke the last word the young man’s voice faltered for a moment, and he felt a thrill of cold disquiet run, as it were, through his frame.  With Freda’s kiss of love upon his lips, how could he think of death?  No; life and light and love should be his portion.  Did not fair fortune smile upon him with favouring eyes?

The keen eyes of the elder man instantly detected that some inward misgiving was possessing him.  He spoke in his clear and cutting tones, so curiously penetrating in their quality.

“You speak of death, and then you shudder.  You are not prepared to lay down your life in the cause?”

Dalaber was silent for a moment; a flood of recollection overwhelmed him.  He heard a sweet voice speaking to him; he heard the very words used.

“Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.”

Suddenly he threw back his head and said: 

“In a good and righteous cause I would face death gladly without shrinking.”

The keen, flashing eyes were fixed full upon his face.  The clear voice spoke on in terse, emphatic phrases.

“Be sure of thyself, Anthony Dalaber.  Put not thy hand to the plough only to turn back.  So far thou art safe.  But I have come to do a work here that is charged with peril.  Thou needest have no hand in it.  Say the word, and I go forth from thy lodging and trouble thee no more.  I ask nothing.  I do but take thee at thy word.  If thy heart has failed or changed, only say so.  One word is enough.  There are other spirits in Oxford strong enough to stand the test.  I came first to thee, Anthony, because I love thee as mine own soul.  But I ask nothing of thee.  There is peril in harbouring such an one as I. Send me forth, and I will go.  So wilt thou be more safe.”

But even as Garret spoke all the old sense of fascination which this man had exercised upon him in London returned in full force upon Dalaber.  The brilliant eyes held him by their spell, the fighting instinct rose hot within him.  His heart had been full of thoughts of love and human bliss; now there arose a sense of coming battle, and the lust of fighting which is in every human heart, and which, in a righteous cause, may be even a God-like attribute, flamed up within him, and he cried aloud: 

“I am on the Lord’s side.  Shall I fear what flesh can do unto me?  I will go forth in the strength of the Lord.  I fear not.  I will be true, even unto death.”

There was no quavering in his voice now.  His face was aglow with the passion of his earnestness.

Next moment Garret was in the midst of one of his fiery orations.  A fresh batch of pamphlets had come over from Germany.  They exposed new and wholesale corruptions which prevailed in the papal court, and which roused the bitterest indignation amongst those who were banded together to uphold righteousness and purity.  Unlike men of Clarke’s calibre of mind, and full of the zeal which in later times blazed out in the movement of the Reformation, Garret could not regard the Catholic Church in its true and universal aspect, embracing all Christian men in its fold ­the one body of which Christ is the head.  He looked upon it as a corrupt organization of man’s devising, a hierarchy of ambitious and scheming men, who, having lost hold of the truth, require to be scathingly denounced and their iniquity exposed; whilst those who thus held her in abhorrence heard the voice of the Spirit in their hearts saying, “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partaker of her plagues.”

The mystical unity of the Catholic Church was a thing understood by few in those days.  The one party held themselves the true church, and anathematized their baptized and Christian brethren as heretics and outcasts; whilst, as a natural outcome of such a state of affairs, these outcasts themselves were disposed to repudiate the very name of Catholic.  And to this very day, in spite of the light which has come to men, and the better understanding with regard to Christian unity, Romanists arrogate that title exclusively to themselves, whilst others in Protestant sections of the church accord them the name willingly, and repudiate it for themselves, with no sense of the anomaly of such repudiation.

But in these days there had been no open split between camp and camp in the Church Catholic, though daily it was growing more and more patent to men that if the abuses and corruptions within the fold were not rectified, some drastic attack from without must of necessity take place.

Garret was a man of action and a man of fire.  He had pored over treatises, penned fiery diatribes, leagued himself with the oppressed, watched the movement of revolt from superstition and idolatry with the keenest interest.  He was in danger, like so many pioneers and so many reformers, of being carried away by his own vehemence.  He saw the idolatry of the Mass, but he was losing sight of the worship which underlay that weight of ceremonial and observance.  Like the people who witnessed the office, the mass of symbolism and the confusion of it blinded his eyes to the truth and beauty of the underlying reality.  He was a devout believer in all primitive truth; he had been, and in a sense still was, a devout priest; but he was becoming an Ishmaelite amongst those of his own calling.

He alarmed them by his lack of discretion, by his fierce attacks.  He did not stop to persuade.  He launched his thunderbolts very much after the same fashion as Luther himself; and the timid and wavering drew back from him in alarm and dismay, fearful whither he would carry them next.

And having, in a sense, made London too hot to hold him, he had left at the entreaty of the brethren themselves, and was now arrived at Oxford ­his former alma mater ­ready to embark upon a similar crusade there.  Here he had some friends and confederates, and he hoped soon to make more.  He knew that there were many amongst the students and masters eager to read the forbidden books, and to judge for themselves the nature of the controversy raging in other countries.  But the work of distribution was attended with many and great dangers; and this visit was of a preliminary character, with a view to ascertaining where and with whom his stores of books (now secreted in a house in Abingdon) might be smuggled into the city and hidden there.  And in Anthony Dalaber he found an eager and daring confederate, whose soul, being stirred to its depths by what he heard, was willing to go all lengths to assist in the forbidden traffic.

As the weeks flew by Dalaber grew more and more eager in his task ­the more so as he became better acquainted with other red-hot spirits amongst the graduates and undergraduates, and heard more and more heated disquisition and controversy.  Sometimes a dozen or more such spirits would assemble in his rooms to hear Garret hold forth upon the themes so near to their hearts; and they would sit far into the night listening to his fiery orations, and seeming each time to gain stronger convictions, and resolve to hold more resolutely to the code of liberty which they had embraced.

Somewhat apart from these excitable youths, yet in much sympathy with them, was a little band who met regularly, and had done so all through the winter months, in Clarke’s rooms in Cardinal College, to listen to his readings and expositions of the holy Scriptures, and to discuss afterwards such matters as the readings had suggested.  That there was peril even in such gatherings as these Clarke very well knew; but he earnestly warned all who asked leave to attend them of that possible peril, and some drew back faint-hearted.  Still he always had as many as his room could well hold; and Dalaber was one of the most regular and eager of his pupils, and one most forward to speak in discussion.

The doctrine of transubstantiation was one of those which was troubling the minds of the seekers after truth.

“How can that wafer of bread and that wine in the cup become actual flesh and blood?” spoke Anthony once, with eager insistence, when in one of the readings the story of the Lord’s passion had been read from end to end.

And he began to quote words from Luther and others bearing on the subject, whilst the students hung upon his words, and listened breathless, with a mingling of admiration and fear.  For was not this, indeed, heresy of a terrible kind?

Clarke listened, too, very quietly and intently, and then took up the word.

“Our blessed Lord cannot lie, nor yet deceive; and He said, ’This is my body this is my blood.’  And St. Paul rebuked the early Christians, because in partaking of the holy sacrament they did not discern the Lord’s body.  And how could they discern what was not present?  Nay, let us devoutly and thankfully believe and know that we do in very truth partake of the Lord’s body, but in a spiritual mystery, higher and holier than any visible miracle would be.  The very essence of a sacrament is that it be spiritual and invisible ­the visible symbol of the invisible reality.  Real and corporate flesh and blood is sacrifice, not sacrament; but the true spiritual presence of the Lord’s body is never absent in His holy rite.  Let us, in all holiness and meekness of spirit, discern the Lord’s body, and thankfully receive it.  And instead of seeking words and formulas in which to express heavenly mysteries, which tongue of man can never utter, nor heart of man comprehend, let us seek for the guiding of the Spirit into all truth, that we may dwell in unity and love with all men, loving even where we see not alike, obeying in as far as we may in sincerity of heart those who are over us in the Lord, seeking the good and not the evil, and praying that the Lord Himself will quickly come to lead and guide His holy church into all the fulness of His own perfect stature.”

This inculcation of obedience, which was one of Clarke’s favourite maxims to his hearers, was by no means palatable to Dalaber, who had launched upon a crusade very contrary to all the commands of the authorities.  His heart always kindled at the fervour and beauty of Clarke’s teachings; but he was more disposed to a belligerent than a submissive attitude, and in that the influence of Garret was plainly to be felt.  Garret was greatly in favour of Clarke’s influence over the students ­he considered that he paved the way with them, as he himself would be unable to do; but he also held that the young canon did not go far enough, and that more was wanted than he was disposed to teach.  He was not in favour of too great insistence upon obedience.  He thought that the world and the church had had somewhat too much of that.  He was a hot advocate of the new doctrine that every man should think and judge for himself.  And Dalaber’s nature was one very ready to imbibe such teaching.

Clarke, though he believed that the more the Scriptures were read and understood by the people, the more would light pour into the church, was not one of those who was ready to conceal and distribute the forbidden books, whether words of holy Scripture or the writings of the Reformers upon them and upon controverted subjects and church abuses.  He held that his own position as a canon forbade this action on his part, and he was also of opinion that there was danger in the too great independence of thought which these writings might engender amongst the unlearned and the hot-headed of the land.  He loved to read and discourse upon holy things with men whose hearts were attuned to thoughts of devotion; but he was not one who would willingly stir up strife in the fold, and he clung earnestly to the hope that the church herself would awaken from her sleep and cleanse herself of her many impurities.

Yet he was a greater power than he guessed in Oxford, for he was regarded as somewhat of a saint by those who knew him; and of late the attention of the heads of the university had become attracted towards him.  Quite unaware of this, he pursued the even tenor of his way, seeking to inspire devotion and love of purity and truth in all with whom he came into contact, but never overstepping the written or unwritten laws of the college, save perhaps that he knew something of the spread of heretical books and doctrines without betraying his knowledge to those in authority.

So the winter weeks flew by; and Dalaber, divided between his hours of bliss and love with Freda (to whom he told everything, and whose sympathies were all astir in the cause to which he was pledged) and his perilous work with Garret, whose visits to Oxford from Abingdon and other places were made in a more or less secret fashion, scarcely heeded the flight of time.  He was taken out of himself by the excitement of the flying hours.  He knew he was doing perilous work; but he knew that Freda’s sympathy was with him, and that she regarded him as a hero in a noble cause.  That was enough to keep him steadfast and fearless, even if the magnetic personality of Garret had not been so often brought to bear upon him.  Whenever Garret was in Oxford –­and now he was more and more often there, for he had quite a following in the place eager to hear more from him and receive fresh books ­he stayed either with Dalaber, or with Radley, the singing man; and in both their lodgings were cleverly-concealed hiding-places, where books could be stowed, that would defy all search, save that of the most stringent kind.

February had come, with its promise of hope, and springtide, and the longer daylight, so dear to the heart of students.  Garret had recently appeared once more in Oxford, and was meeting almost daily with the confraternity there.  He had brought a fresh consignment of books, some of which he lodged with Dalaber, and some with Radley, as was his wont.  There were stolen meetings held in many places, but most often at those two lodgings; and the little band seemed growing in strength daily, when a sudden tempest broke upon it, falling like a bolt from the blue.

A meeting at Radley’s house had broken up.  Dalaber and Garret walked homewards in the dusk towards their quarters in St. Alban Hall.  When Garret was in Oxford, Fitzjames gave up his share of Dalaber’s lodging to him, and betook himself elsewhere; but when they reached the room they found somebody sitting there awaiting them in the dusk, and Dalaber hailed him as Fitzjames.

But as the stranger rose he saw that he had been mistaken.  It was Arthur Cole, and his face was grave as he quietly closed the door.

“I have come to warn you, Master Garret,” he said in a low voice.  “Your doings in this place have become known, and have betrayed your whereabouts.  Cardinal Wolsey himself has sent down a mandate for your arrest.  The Dean of Cardinal College is even now in conference with the Commissary of the University and with Dr. London of New College.  You know very well what mercy you are like to meet with if you fall into their hands.”

Dalaber started and changed colour; but Garret had been a hunted man before this, and received the news quietly.

“They know I am in Oxford, then.  Do they know where I may be found?” he asked quietly enough.

“Not yet.  They are about to put the proctors on the scent.  Tonight you are safe, but early on the morrow inquisition and search will commence.  You will be speedily discovered and arrested if you are not far enough away by that time.

“Be warned, Master Garret.  You are reckoned as a mischievous man.  The cardinal is not cruel, but some of his colleagues and subordinates are.  Men have been burnt at the stake before this for offences lighter than yours, for you not only hold heretical doctrines yourself, but you seek to spread them broadcast throughout the land.  That is not an offence easily passed over.”

Dalaber felt as though a cold stream of water were running down his back.  His vivid imagination grasped in a moment all the fearful possibilities of the case, and he felt his knees fail for a moment under him.  Yet it was not for himself he feared at that moment.  He scarcely realized that this tracking down of Garret might lead to revelations which would be damaging to himself.  His fears and his tremors were all for his friend ­that friend standing motionless beside him as though lost in thought.

“You hold me a heretic, too, Master Cole?”

“I do,” answered the young man at once, and without hesitation.

“And yet you come and warn me ­a step that might cost you dear were it known to the authorities.”

“Yes,” answered Cole quietly; “I come to warn you, and that for two reasons, neither of which is sympathy with the cause you advocate.  I warn you because you are a graduate of Magdalen College, and I had some knowledge of you in the past, and received some kindness at your hands long since, when I was a youthful clerk and you a regent master; and also because I have a great friendship for Dalaber here, and for Clarke, and for others known to you, and who would suffer grief, and fall perhaps into some peril were you to be taken.  Also, I hold that it is ofttimes right to succour the weak against the strong, and I love not persecution in any form, though the contumacious and recalcitrant have to be sternly dealt with.  So fare you well, and get you gone quickly, for after this night there will be no safety for you in Oxford.”

With that Cole turned to depart; but he laid a hand on Dalaber’s arm, and the latter, understanding the hint, went with him down the staircase, where they paused in the darkness.

“Have a care, Anthony, have a care,” spoke Cole with energy.  “I know not as yet whether you be suspected or not; but, truly, you have shown yourself something reckless in these matters, and there must be many in the place who could betray to the proctors your dealings with Garret.  Send him forth without delay.  Let there be no dallying or tarrying.  Look well to it; and if you have any forbidden books, let them be instantly destroyed.  Keep nothing that can be used as evidence against you, for I verily believe there will be close and strict search and inquest made, in accordance with the cardinal’s mandate.  I only hope and trust that our worthy friend Clarke may not fall into the hands of the bloodhounds, keen on the scent of heresy.”

“God forbid!” cried Anthony quickly.

“God forbid indeed!  But there is no knowing.  He may be in peril, and others, too.  But let there be an end tonight of all dallying with dangerous persons.  Send Garret away forthwith, burn your books, and settle once more to your rightful studies.  You have played with fire something too long, Anthony; let there be an end of it forthwith, lest the fire leap upon you in a fashion you think not of.”