Chapter Seven.
Dame Maisenta does not see it.
“With a little hoard of maxims, preaching down a daughter’s heart.”—Tennyson.
Earl Edmund had not been callous to the white, woeful face under one of the bridal wreaths. He set himself to think how most pleasantly to divert the thoughts of Clarice; and the result of his meditations was a request to Father Miles that he would induce the Countess to invite the parents of Clarice on a visit. The Countess always obeyed Father Miles, though had she known whence the suggestion came, she might have been less docile. A letter, tied up with red silk, and sealed with the Countess’s seal, was despatched by a messenger to Dame La Theyn, whom it put into no small flutter of nervous excitement.
A journey to London was a tremendous idea to that worthy woman, though she lived but forty miles from the metropolis. She had never been there in her life. Sir Gilbert had once visited it, and had dilated on the size, splendour, and attractions of the place, till it stood, in the Dame’s eyes, next to going to Heaven. It may, indeed, be doubted if she would not have found herself a good deal more at home in the former place than the latter.
Three sumpter-mules were laden with the richest garments and ornaments in the wardrobes of knight and dame. Two armed servants were on one horse, Sir Gilbert and his wife on another; and thus provided, late in February, they drew bridle at the gate of Whitehall Palace. Clarice had not been told of their coming by the Countess, because she was not sufficiently interested; by the Earl, because he wished it to be a pleasant surprise. She was called out into the ante-chamber one afternoon, and, to her complete astonishment, found herself in the presence of her parents.
The greeting was tolerably warm.
“Why, child, what hast done to thy cheeks?” demanded Sir Gilbert, when he had kissed his palefaced daughter. “’Tis all the smoke—that’s what it is!”
“Nay; be sure ’tis the late hours,” responded the Dame. “I’ll warrant you they go not to bed here afore seven o’ the clock. Eh, Clarice?”
“Not before eight, Dame,” answered Clarice, with a smile.
“Eight!” cried Dame Maisenta. “Eh, deary me! Mine head to a pod of peas, but that’s a hearing! And what time get they up of a morrow?”
“The Lady rises commonly by five or soon after.”
“Saint Wulstan be our aid! Heard I ever the like? Why, I am never abed after three!”
“So thou art become Dame Clarice?” said her father, jovially.
The smile died instantly from Clarice’s lips. “Yes,” she said, drearily.
“Where is thy knight, lass?” demanded her mother.
“You will see him in hall,” replied Clarice. And when they went down to supper she presented Vivian in due form.
No one knew better than Vivian Barkeworth how to adapt himself to his company. He measured his bride’s parents as accurately, in the first five minutes, as a draper would measure a yard of calico. It is not surprising if they were both delighted with him.
The Countess received her guests with careless condescension, the Earl with kind cordiality. Dame La Theyn was deeply interested in seeing both. But her chief aim was a long tête-à-tête discourse with Clarice, which she obtained on the day following her arrival. The Countess, as usual, had gone to visit a shrine, and Clarice, being off duty, took her mother to the terrace, where they could chat undisturbed.
Some of us modern folks would rather shrink from sitting on an open terrace in February; but our forefathers were wonderfully independent of the weather, and seem to have been singularly callous in respect to heat and cold. Dame La Theyn made no objection to the airiness of her position, but settled herself comfortably in the corner of the stone bench, and prepared for her chat with much gusto.
“Well, child,” was the Dame’s first remark, “the good saints have ordered matters rarely for thee. I ventured not to look for such good fortune, not so soon as this. Trust me, but I was rejoiced when I read thy lady’s letter, to hear that thou wert well wed unto a knight, and that she had found all the gear. I warrant thee, the grass grew not under my feet afore Dame Rouse, and Mistress Swetapple, and every woman of our neighbours, down to Joan Stick-i’-th’-Lane, knew the good luck that was come to thee.”
Clarice sat with her hands in her lap looking out on the river. Good luck! Could Dame La Theyn see no further than that!
“Why, lass, what is come to thee?” demanded the Dame, when she found no response. “Sure, thou art not ungrateful to thy lady for her care and goodness! That were a sin to be shriven for.”
Clarice turned her wan face towards her mother.
“Grateful!” she said. “For what should I be thankful to her? Dame, she has torn me away from the only one in the world that I loved, and has forced me to wed a man whom I alike fear and hate. Do you think that matter for thankfulness, or does she!”
“Tut, tut!” said the Dame. “Do not ruffle up thy feathers like a pigeon that has got bread-crumbs when he looked for corn! Why, child, ’tis but what all women have to put up with. We all have our calf-loves and bits of maidenly fancies, but who ever thought they were to rule the roast? Sure, Clarice, thou hast more sense than so?”
“Dame, pardon me, but you understand not. This was no light love of mine—no passing fancy that a newer one might have put out. It was the one hope and joy of my whole life. I had nothing else to live for.”
To Clarice’s horror, the rejoinder to her rhetoric was what the Dame herself would have called “a jolly laugh.”
“Dear, dear, how like all young maids be!” cried the mother. “Just the very thought had I when my good knight my father sent away Master Pride, and told me I must needs wed with thy father, Sir Gilbert. That is twenty years gone this winter Clarice, and I swear to thee I thought mine heart was broke. Look on me now. Look I like a woman that had brake her heart o’ love? I trow not, by my troth!”
No; certainly no one would have credited that rosy, comfortable matron with having broken her heart any number of years ago.
“And thou wilt see, too, when twenty years be over, Clarice, I warrant thee thou shalt look back and laugh at thine own folly. Deary me, child! Folks cannot weep for ever and the day after. Wait till thou art forty, and then see if thy trouble be as sore in thy mind then as now.”
Forty! Should she ever be forty? Clarice fondly hoped not. And would any lapse of years change the love which seemed to her interwoven with every fibre of her heart? That heart cried out and said, Impossible! But Dame La Theyn heard no answer.
“When thou hast dwelt on middle earth (Note 1), child, as long as I have, thou wilt look on things more in proportion. There be other affairs in life than lovemaking. Women spend not all their days thinking of wooing, and men still less. I warrant thee thy lover, whoso he be, shall right soon comfort himself with some other damsel. Never suspect a man of constancy, child. They know not what the word means.”
Clarice’s inner consciousness violently contradicted this sweeping statement. But she kept silence still.
“Ah, I see!” said her mother, laughing. “Not a word dost thou credit me. I may as well save my breath to cool my porridge. Howsoe’er, Clarice, when thou hast come to forty years, if I am yet alive, let me hear thy thoughts thereupon. Long ere that time come, as sure as eggs be eggs, thou shalt be a-reading the same lesson to a lass of thine, if it please God so to bless thee. And she’ll not believe thee a word, any more than thou dost me. Eh, these young folks, these young folks! truly, they be rare fun for us old ones. They think they’ve gotten all the wisdom that ever dwelt in King Solomon’s head, and we may stand aside and doff our caps to them. Good lack!—but this world is a queer place, and a merry!”
Clarice thought she had not found it a merry locality by any means.
“And what ails thee at thy knight, child? He is as well-favoured and tall of his hands as e’er a one. Trust me, but I liked him well, and so said thy father. He is a pleasant fellow, no less than a comely. What ails thee at him?”
“Dame, I cannot feel to trust him.”
“Give o’er with thy nonsense! Thou mayest trust him as well as another man. They are all alike. They want their own way, and to please themselves, and if they’ve gotten a bit of time and thought o’er they’ll maybe please thee at after. That’s the way of the world, child. If thou art one of those silly lasses that look for a man who shall never let his eyes rove from thee, nor never make no love to nobody else, why, thou mayest have thy search for thy pains. Thou art little like to catch that lark afore the sky falls.”
Clarice thought that lark had been caught for her, and had been torn from her.
“And what matter?” continued Dame La Theyn. “If a man likes his wife the best, and treats her reasonable kind, as the most do—and I make no doubt thine shall—why should he not have his little pleasures? Thou canst do a bit on thine own account. But mind thou, keep on the windward side o’ decency. ’Tis no good committing o’ mortal sin, and a deal o’ trouble to get shriven for it. Mind thy ways afore the world! And let not thy knight get angered with thee, no more. But I’ll tell thee, Clarice, thou wilt anger him afore long, to carry thyself thus towards him. Of course a man knows he must put up with a bit of perversity and bashfulness when he is first wed; because he can guess reasonable well that the maid might not have chose him her own self. But it does not do to keep it up. Thou must mind thy ways, child.”
Clarice was almost holding her breath. Whether horror or disgust were the feeling uppermost in her mind, she would have found difficult to tell. Was this her mother, who gave her such counsel? And were all women like that? One other distinct idea was left to her—that there was an additional reason for dying—to get out of it all.
“Thou art but a simple lass, I can see,” reflectively added Dame La Theyn. “Thou hast right the young lass’s notions touching truth, and faith, and constancy, and such like. All a parcel of moonshine, child! There is no such thing, not in this world. Some folks be a bit worse than others, but that’s all. I dare reckon thy knight is one of the better end. At any rate, thou wilt find it comfortable to think so.”
Clarice was inwardly convinced that Vivian belonged to the scrag end, so far as character went.
“That’s the true way to get through the world, child. Shut thy eyes to whatever thou wouldst not like to see. Nobody’ll admire thee more for having red rims to ’em. And, dear heart, where’s the good? ’Tis none but fools break their hearts. Wise folks jog on jollily. And if there’s somewhat to forgive on the one side, why, there’ll be somewhat on the other. Thou art not an angel—don’t fancy it. And if he isn’t neither—”
Of that fact Clarice felt superlatively convinced.
“The best way is not to expect it of him, and thou wilt be the less disappointed. So get out thy ribbons and busk thee, and let’s have no more tears shed. There’s been a quart too much already.”
A slight movement of nervous impatience was the sole reply.
“Eh, Clarice? Ne’er a word, trow?”
Then she turned round a wan, set, distressed face, with fervent determination glowing in the eyes.
“Mother! I would rather die, and be out of it!”
“Be out of what, quotha?” demanded Dame La Theyn, in astonished tones.
“This world,” said Clarice, through her set teeth. “This hard, cold, cruel, miserable, wicked world. Is there only one of two lives before me—either to harden into stone and crush other hearts, or to be crushed by the others that have got hard before me? Oh, Mother, Mother! is there nothing in the world for a woman but that?—God, let me die before I come to either!”
“Deary, deary, deary me!” seemed to be all that Dame La Theyn felt herself capable of saying.
“A few weeks ago,” Clarice went on, “before—this, there was a higher and better view of life given to me. One that would make one’s crushed heart grow softer, and not harder; that was upward and not downward; that led to Heaven and God, not to Hell and Satan. There is no hope for me in this life but the hope of Heaven. For pity’s sake let me keep that! If every other human creature is going down—you seem to think so—let me go higher, not lower. Because my life has been spoiled for me, shall I deliberately poison my own soul? May God forbid it me! If I am to spend my life with demons, let my spirit live with God.”
The feelings of Dame La Theyn, on hearing this speech from Clarice, were not capable of expression in words.
In her eyes, as in those of all Romanists, there were two lives which a man or woman could lead—the religious and the secular. To lead a religious life meant, as a matter of course, to go into the cloister. Matrimony and piety were simply incompatible. Clarice was a married woman: ergo, she could not possibly be religious. Dame La Theyn’s mind, to use one of her favourite expressions, was all of a jumble with these extraordinary ideas of which her daughter had unaccountably got hold. “What on earth is the child driving at? is she mad?” thought her mother.
“What dost thou mean, child?” inquired the extremely puzzled Dame. “Thou canst not go into the cloister—thou art wed. Dear heart, but I never reckoned thou hadst any vocation! Thou shouldst have told thy lady.”
“I do not want the cloister,” said Clarice. “I want to do God’s will. I want to belong to God.”
“Why, that is the same thing!” responded the still perplexed woman.
“The Lord Earl is not a monk,” replied Clarice. “And I am sure he belongs to God, for he knows Him better than any priest that I ever saw.”
“Child, child! Did I not tell thee, afore ever thou earnest into this house, that thy Lord was a man full of queer fancies, and all manner of strange things? Don’t thee go and get notions into thine head, for mercy’s sake! Thou must live either in the world or the cloister. Who ever heard of a wedded woman devote to religion? Thou canst not have both—’tis nonsense. Is that one of thy Lord’s queer notions? Sure, these friars never taught thee so?”
“The friars never taught me anything. Father Bevis tried to help me, but he did not know how. My Lord was the only one who understood.”
“Understood? Understood what?”
“Who understood me, and who understood God.”
“Clarice, what manner of tongue art thou talking? ’Tis none I never learned.”
No, for Clarice was beginning to lisp the language of Canaan, and “they that kept the fair were men of this world.” What wonder if she and her thoroughly time-serving mother found it impossible to understand each other?
“I cannot make thee out, lass. If thou wert aware afore thou wert wed that thou hadst a vocation, ’twas right wicked of thee not to tell thy confessor and thy mistress, both. But I cannot see how it well could, when thou wert all head o’er ears o’ love with some gallant or other—the saints know whom. I reckon it undecent, in very deed, Clarice, to meddle up a love-tale with matters of religion. I do wonder thou hast no more sense of fitness and decorum.”
“It were a sad thing,” said Clarice quietly, “if only irreligious people might love each other.”
“Love each other! Dear heart, thy brains must be made o’ forcemeat! Thou hast got love, and religion, and living, and all manner o’ things, jumbled up together in a pie. They’ve nought to do with each other, thou silly lass.”
“If religion has nought to do with living, Dame, under your good pleasure, what has it to do with?”
A query which Dame La Theyn found it as difficult to comprehend as to answer. In her eyes, religion was a thing to take to church on Sunday, and life was restricted to the periods when people were not in church. When she laid up her Sunday gown in lavender, she put her religion in with it. Of course, nuns were religious every day, but nobody else ever thought of such an unreasonable thing. Clarice’s new ideas, therefore, to her, were simply preposterous and irrational.
“Clarice!” she said, in tones of considerable surprise, “I do wonder what’s come o’er thee! This is not the lass I sent to Oakham. Have the fairies been and changed thee, or what on earth has happened to thee? I cannot make thee out!”
“I hardly know what has happened to me,” was the answer, “but I think it is that I have gone nearer God. He ploughed up my heart with the furrow of bitter sorrow, and then He made it soft with the dew of His grace. I suppose the seed will come next. What that is I do not know yet. But my knowing does not matter if He knows.”
The difference which Dame La Theyn failed to understand was the difference between life and death. The words of the Earl had been used as a seed of life, and the life was growing. It is the necessity of life to grow, and it is an impossibility that death should appreciate life.
“Well!” was the Dame’s conclusion, delivered as she rose from the stone bench, in a perplexed and disappointed tone, “I reckon thou wilt be like to take thine own way, child, for I cannot make either head or tail of thy notions. Only I do hope thou wilt not set up to be unlike everybody else. Depend upon it, Clarice, a woman never comes to no good when she sets up to be better than her neighbours. It is bad enough in anybody, but ’tis worser in a woman than a man. I cannot tell who has stuck thy queer notions into thee—whether ’tis thy Lord, or thy lover, or who; but I would to all the saints he had let thee be. I liked thee a deal better afore, I can tell thee. I never had no fancy for philosophy and such.”
“Mother,” said Clarice softly, “I think it was God.”
“Gently, child! No bad language, prithee.” Dame La Theyn looked upon pious language as profanity when uttered in an unconsecrated place. “But if it were the Almighty that put these notions into thy head, I pray He’ll take ’em out again.”
“I think not,” quietly replied Clarice.
And so the scene closed. Neither had understood the other, so far, at least, as spiritual matters were concerned. But in respect to the secular question Dame La Theyn could enter into Clarice’s thoughts more than she chose to allow. The dialogue stirred within her faint memories—not quite dead—of that earlier time when her tears had flowed for the like cause, and when she had felt absolutely certain that she could never be happy again. But her love had been of a selfish and surface kind, and the wound, never more than skin-deep, had healed rapidly and left no scar. Was it surprising if she took it for granted that her daughter’s was of the same class, and would heal with equal rapidity and completeness? Beside this, she thought it very unwise policy to let Clarice perceive that she did understand her in any wise. It would encourage her in her folly, Dame La Theyn considered, if she supposed that so wise a person as her mother could have any sympathy with such notions. So she wrapped herself complacently in her mantle of wisdom, and never perceived that she was severing the last strand of the rope which bound her child’s heart to her own.
“O, purblind race of miserable men!”
How strangely we all spend our lives in the anxious labour of straining out gnats, while we scarcely detect the moment when we swallow the camel!
A long private conversation between Clarice’s parents resulted the next day in Sir Gilbert taking her in hand. His comprehension was even less than her mother’s, though it lay in a different direction.
“Well, Clarice, my dame tells me thou art not altogether well pleased with thy wedding. What didst thou wish otherwise, lass?”
“The man,” said Clarice, shortly enough.
“What, is not one man as good as another?” demanded her father.
“Not to me, Sir,” said his daughter.
“I am afeared, Clarice, thou hast some romantic notions. They are all very pretty to play with, but they don’t do for this world, child. Thou hast better shake them out of thine head, and be content with thy lot.”
“It is a bad world, I know,” replied Clarice. “But it is hard to be content, when life has been emptied and spoiled for one.”
“Folly, child, folly!” said Sir Gilbert. “Thou mayest have as many silk gowns now as thou couldst have had with any other knight; and I dare be bound Sir Vivian should give thee a gold chain if thou wert pining for it. Should that content thee?”
“No, Sir.”
Sir Gilbert was puzzled. A woman whose perfect happiness could not be secured by a gold chain was an enigma to him.
“Then what would content thee?” he asked.
“What I can never have now,” answered Clarice. “It may be, as time goes on, that God will make me content without it—content with His will, and no more. But I doubt if even He could do that just yet. The wisest physician living cannot heal a wound in a minute. It must have its time.”
Sir Gilbert tried to puzzle his way through this speech.
“Well, child, I do not see what I can do for thee.”
“I thank you for wishing it, fair Sir. No, you can do nothing. No one can do anything for me, except let me alone, and pray to God to heal the wound.”
“Well, lass, I can do that,” said her father, brightening. “I will say the rosary all over for thee once in the week, and give a candle to our Lady. Will that do thee a bit of good, eh?”
Clarice had an instinctive feeling, that while the rosary and the candle might be a doubtful good, the rough tenderness of her father was a positive one. Little as Sir Gilbert could enter into her ideas, his affection was truer and more unselfish than that of her mother. Neither of them was very deeply attached to her; but Sir Gilbert’s love could have borne the harder strain of the two. Clarice began to recognise the fact with touched surprise.
“Fair Sir, I shall be very thankful for your prayers. It will do me good to be loved—so far as anything can do it.”
Sir Gilbert was also discovering, with a little astonishment himself, that his only child lay nearer to his heart than he had supposed. His heart was a plant which had never received much cultivation, either from himself or any other; and love, even in faint throbs, was a rather strange sensation. It made him feel as if something were the matter with him, and he could not exactly tell what. He patted Clarice’s shoulder, and smoothed down her hair.
“Well, well, child! I hope all things will settle comfortably by and by. But if they should not, and in especial if thy knight were ever unkindly toward thee—which God avert!—do not forget that thou hast a friend in thine old father. Maybe he has not shown thee over much kindliness neither, but I reckon, my lass, if it came to a pull, there’d be a bit to pull at.”
Neither Sir Gilbert nor Dame Maisenta ever fully realised the result of that visit. It found Clarice indifferent to both, but ready to reach out a hand to either who would clasp it with any appearance of tenderness and compassion. It left her with a heart closed for ever to her mother, but for ever open to her father.
Note 1. This mediaeval term for the world had its rise in the notion that earth stood midway between Heaven and Hell, the one being as far below as the other was above.
Chapter Eight.
The Shadow of the Future.
In His name was struck the blow
That hath laid thy old life low
In a garb of blood-red woe.
A very eventful year was 1291 in England and over all the civilised world. It was the end of the Crusades, the Turks driving the Christians from Acre, the last place which they held in Palestine. It opened with the submission of the Scottish succession to the arbitrament of Edward the First, and it closed with the funeral of his mother, Queen Eléonore of Provence—a woman whom England was not able to thank for one good deed during her long and stormy reign. She had been a youthful beauty, she wrote poetry, and she had never scandalised the nation by any impropriety of womanly conduct. But these three statements close the list of her virtues. She was equally grasping, unscrupulous, and extravagant. In her old age she retired to the Convent of Amesbury, where her two granddaughters, Mary of England, and Alianora of Bretagne, were nuns already, for the desirable purpose of “making her salvation.” Perhaps she thought she had made it when the summons came to her in the autumn of 1291. No voice had whispered to her, all through her long life of nearly eighty years, that if that ever were to be—
“Jesus Christ has done it all
Long, long ago.”
Matters had settled down quietly enough in Whitehall Palace. Sir Fulk de Chaucombe and Diana had been promoted to the royal household—the former as attendant upon the King, the latter as Lady of the Bedchamber to his eldest daughter, the Princess Alianora, who, though twenty-seven years of age, was still unmarried. It was a cause of some surprise in her household that the Countess of Cornwall did not fill up the vacancy created among her maidens by the marriages of Clarice and Diana. But when December came it was evident that before she did so she meant to make the vacancy still more complete.
One dark afternoon in that cheerful month, the Lady Margaret marched into the bower, where her female attendants usually sat when not engaged in more active waiting upon her. It was Saturday.
“Olympias Trusbut, Roisia de Levinton,” she said in her harsh voice, which did not sound unlike the rasping of a file, “ye are to be wed on Monday morning.”
Olympias showed slight signs of going into hysterics, which being observed by the Lady Margaret, she calmly desired Felicia to fetch a jug of water. On this hint of what was likely to happen to her if she imprudently screamed or fainted, Olympias managed to recover.
“Ye are to wed the two squires,” observed their imperious mistress. “I gave the choice to Reginald de Echingham, and he fixed on thee, Olympias.”
Olympias passed from terror to ecstasy.
“Thou, Roisia, art to wed Ademar de Gernet. I will give both of you your gear.”
And away walked the Countess.
“I wish she would have let me alone,” said Roisia, in doleful accents.
“Too much to hope for,” responded Felicia.
“Dost thou not like De Gernet?” asked Clarice, sympathisingly.
“Oh, I don’t dislike him,” said Roisia; “but I am not so fond of him as that comes to.”
An hour or two later, however, Mistress Underdone appeared, in a state of flurry by no means her normal one.
“Well, here is a pretty tale,” said she. “Not for thee, Olympias; matters be running smooth for thee, though the Lord Earl did say,” added she, laughing, “that incense was as breath of life to Narcissus, and he would needs choose the maid that should burn plenty on his altar. But—the thing is fair unheard of!—Ademar de Gernet refuses to wed under direction from the Lady.”
“Why?” asked Roisia, looking rather insulted.
“Oh, it has nought to do with thee, child,” said Mistress Underdone. “Quoth he that he desired all happiness to thee, and pardon of thee for thus dealing; but having given his heart to another of the Lady’s damsels, he would not wed with any but her.”
“Why, that must be Felicia,” said the other three together.
Felicia looked flattered and conscious.
“Well, I reckon so,” answered Mistress Underdone. “Howbeit, the Lady hath sent for him hither, to know of him in thy presence what he would be at.”
“Ha, chétife!” exclaimed Roisia. “I wish it had been somewhere else.”
“Well, I cannot quite—. Hush! here she comes.”
And for the second time that day in stalked the Countess, and sat down on the curule chair which Mistress Underdone set for her, looking like a judge, and a very stern one, too. In another minute the culprit made his appearance, in charge of Sir Lambert Aylmer.
“Now, De Gernet, what means this?” irascibly demanded his mistress.
“Lady, it means not disobedience to you, nor any displeasance done to this young damsel”—and De Gernet turned and bowed to Roisia. “This it means, that I dearly love another of your Ladyship’s damsels, and I do most humbly and heartily crave your permission to wed with her.”
“What, Felicia de Fay?” said the Countess.
“Under your Ladyship’s pleasure and her pardon, no.”
Felicia’s face changed evilly.
“But who, then? There is none other.”
“Let my Lady be pleased to pardon me. There is one other—Heliet Pride.”
The faces in the bower just then might have furnished a study for an artist. Those of Clarice and Olympias expressed surprise mixed with some pleasure; so did Mistress Underdone’s, but the degree of both was intense. The Countess looked half vexed and wholly astonished, with a little contempt superadded. Felicia’s face foreboded nothing but ill to either Ademar or Heliet.
“Heliet Pride!” cried the Countess sharply. “Why, man, she goes on crutches!”
“They will carry her to the chapel, with my Lady’s leave,” answered De Gernet, coolly.
“Gramercy, but thou wilt have a lovely wife! There’ll be no pride in her outside her name,” said the Countess, with a grim smile at her own joke. Indeed, she was so much amused that she forgot to be angry.
“I will see about that, if my Lady will grant me her grace,” responded De Gernet, in the same tone.
“Eh, thou shalt have her,” said the Countess. “I shall get Roisia disposed of a sight easier than Heliet. So be it. Roisia, thou canst still prepare for thy bridal; I will find somebody by Monday morning.”
The Countess was rising from her chair, when Sir Lambert, after a glance at Roisia, observed that if her Ladyship found any difficulty in that selection, he had no particular objection to be chosen.
“You!” said the Countess. “Oh, very good; it will save trouble. Let it be so.”
Roisia appeared to be, if anything, rather gratified by the exchange. But Clarice, looking into the dark, passionate eyes of Felicia, felt troubled for the happiness of Heliet.
Olympias, like Clarice, was promoted to a vacancy among the ladies of the bedchamber. But Sir Lambert and Roisia passed away from the life at Whitehall. The new Maids of Honour were speedily appointed. Their names proved to be Sabina Babingell, Ada Gresley, and Filomena Bray. The Countess declared her intention of keeping four only in the future.
The summer of 1292 saw the King on the Scottish border, and in his train the Earl and Countess of Cornwall, with their household, moved north as far as Oakham. The household had been increased by one more, for in the April previous Clarice Barkeworth became the mother of a little girl. This was the first event which helped to reconcile her to her lot. She had been honestly trying hard to do her duty by Vivian, who scarcely seemed to think that he had any duty towards her, beyond the obvious one of civility in public. All thought of Piers Ingham had been resolutely crushed down, except when it came—as it sometimes did—in the form of a dream of bliss from which she awoke to desolation. A miserable day was sure to follow one of those dreams. The only other moment when she allowed herself to think of him was in her evening prayer.
It was a relief to Clarice that she had never heard a word of Piers since he left Whitehall. Her work would have been harder if his name had remained a household word. And yet in another sense it was hard never to know what had become of him, whether he were as sad as herself, or had been comforted elsewhere.
Vivian’s manners in public were perfect to every one, and Clarice shared with the rest. In private she was terribly snubbed whenever he was in a bad temper, and carelessly ignored when he was in a good one. The baby daughter, who was such a comfort to Clarice, was a source of bitter vexation to Vivian. In his eyes, while a son would have been an undoubted blessing, a daughter was something actively worse than a disappointment. When Clarice timidly inquired what name he wished the child to bear, Vivian distinctly intimated that the child and all her belongings were totally beneath his notice. She could call the nuisance what she liked.
Clarice silently folded her insulted darling to her breast, and tacitly promised it that its mother at least should never think it a nuisance.
“What shall I call her?” she said to Mistress Underdone and Olympias, both of whom were inclined to pet the baby exceedingly.
“Oh, something pretty!” said Olympias. “Don’t have a plain, common name. Don’t call her Joan, or Parnel, or Beatrice, or Margery, or Maud, or Isabel. You meet those at every turn. I am quite glad I was not called anything of that sort.”
“I wouldn’t have it too long,” was Mistress Underdone’s recommendation. “I’d never call her Frethesancia, or Florianora, or Aniflesia, or Sauncelina. Let her have a good, honest name, Dame, one syllable, or at most two. You’ll have to clip it otherwise.”
“I thought of Rose,” said Clarice, meditatively.
“Well, it is not common,” allowed Olympias. “Still, it is very short. Couldn’t you have had it a little longer?”
“That’ll do,” pronounced Mistress Underdone. “It is short, and it means a pretty, sweet, pleasant thing. I don’t know but I should have called my girl Rose, if I’d chosen her name; but her father fancied Heliet, and so it had to be so.”
“Well, we can call her Rosamond,” comfortingly suggested Olympias.
So, in the course of that evening, Father Bevis baptised little Rose Barkeworth in the chapel of the palace, the Earl standing sponsor for her, with the Lady de Chaucombe and the Lady de Echingham. The Countess had been asked, but to Clarice’s private satisfaction had declined, for she would much rather have had the Earl, and the canon law forbade husband and wife being sponsors to the same infant.
Something was the matter with the Countess. Every one agreed upon this, but nobody could guess what it was. She was quieter than her wont, and was given to long, silent reveries, which had not been usual with her.
Filomena, who was of a lively turn of mind, declared that life at Whitehall was becoming absolutely intolerable, and that she should be thankful to go to Oakham, for at least it would be something new.
“Thou wilt be thankful to come away again,” said Mistress Underdone, with a smile.
They reached Oakham about the middle of July, and found Heliet, leaning on her crutches, ready to welcome them with smiles in the hall. No news had reached her of their proceedings, and there was a great deal to tell her; but Heliet and the baby took to one another in an instant, as if by some unseen magical force.
The item of news which most concerned herself was not told to Heliet that night. The next morning, when all were seated at work, and baby Rose, in Heliet’s lap, was contentedly sucking her very small thumb, Mistress Underdone said rather suddenly, “We have not told thee all, Heliet.”
“I dare say not,” replied Heliet, brightly. “You must have all done a great deal more in these two years than you have told me.”
“Well, lass, ’tis somewhat I never looked I should have to tell thee. There’s somebody wants to wed thee.”
“Me!” cried Heliet, in large capitals.
“Ay, thee—crutches and all,” said her mother laughing. “He said he did not care for thy crutches so they carried thee safe to chapel; and he ran the risk of offending the Lady to get thee. So I reckon he sets some store by thee, lass.”
“Who is it?” said Heliet, in a low voice, while a bright red spot burned in each cheek.
“Ademar de Gernet.” Two or three voices told her. The bright spots burned deeper.
“Is it to be?” was the next question.
“Ay, the Lady said so much; and I reckon she shall give thee thy gear.”
“God has been very good to me,” said Heliet, softly, rocking little Rose gently to and fro. “But I never thought He meant to give me that!”
Clarice looked up, and saw a depth of happy love in the lame girl’s eyes, which made her sigh for herself. Then, looking further, she perceived a depth of black hate in those of Felicia de Fay, which made her tremble for Heliet.
It appeared very shortly that the Countess was in a hurry to get the wedding over. Perhaps she was weary of weddings in her household, for she did not seem to be in a good temper about this. She always thought Heliet would have had a vocation, she said, which would have been far better for her, with her lameness, than to go limping into chapel to be wed. She wondered nobody saw the impropriety of it. However, as she had promised De Gernet, she supposed it must be so. She did not know what she herself could have been thinking about to make such a foolish promise. She was not usually so silly as that. However, if it must be, it had better be got over.
So got over it was, on an early morning in August, De Gernet receiving knighthood from the Earl at the close of the ceremony.
Mistress Underdone had petitioned that her lame and only child might not be separated from her, and the Countess—according to her own authority, in a moment of foolishness—had granted the petition. So Heliet was drafted among the Ladies of the Bedchamber, but only as an honorary distinction.
The manner of the Countess continued to strike every one as unusual. Long fits of musing with hands lying idle were becoming common with her, and when she rose from them she would generally shut herself up in her oratory for the remainder of the day. Clarice thought, and Heliet agreed with her, that something was going to happen. Once, too, as Clarice was carrying Rose along the terrace, she was met by the Earl, who stopped and noticed the child, as in his intense and unsatisfied love for little children he always did. Clarice thought he looked even unwontedly sorrowful.
From the child, Earl Edmund looked up into the pleased eyes of the young mother.
“Dame Clarice,” he asked, gently, “are you happier than you were?”
Her eyes grew suddenly grave.
“Thus far,” she said, touching the child. “Otherwise—I try to be content with God’s will, fair Lord. It is hard to bear heart-hunger.”
“Ah!” The Earl’s tone was significant. “Yes, it is hard to bear in any form,” he said, after a pause. “May God send you never to know, Dame, that there is a more terrible form than that wherein you bear it.”
And he left her almost abruptly.
The winter of 1292 dragged slowly along. Filomena declared that her body was as starved as her mind, and she should be frozen to death if she stayed any longer. The next day, to everybody’s astonishment, the Countess issued orders to pack up for travelling. Sir Vivian and Clarice were to go with her—where, she did not say. So were Olympias, Felicia, and Ada. Mistress Underdone, Sir Reginald, Sir Ademar and Heliet, Filomena and Sabina, were left behind at Oakham.
Olympias grumbled extremely at being separated from her husband, and Filomena at being left behind. The Countess would listen to neither.
“When shall we return, under my Lady’s leave?” asked Olympias, disconsolately.
“You can return,” was the curt answer, “when I have done with you. I doubt if Sir Vivian and his dame will return at all. Ada certainly will not.”
“Ha, jolife!” said Ada, under her breath. She did not like Oakham.
Clarice, on the contrary, was inclined to make an exclamation of horror. For never to return to Oakham meant never to see Heliet again. And what could the Countess mean by a statement which sounded at least as if she were not intending to return?
Concerning Felicia the Countess said nothing. That misnamed young lady had during the past few months been trying her best to make Heliet miserable. She began by attempting to flirt with Sir Ademar, but she found him completely impervious material. Her arrows glanced upon his shield, and simply dropped off without further notice. Then she took to taunting Heliet with her lameness, but Heliet kept her temper. Next she sneered at her religious views. Heliet answered her gently, gravely, but held her own with undiminished calmness. This point had been reached when the Countess’s order was given to depart from Oakham.
Even those least disposed to note the signs of the times felt the pressure of some impending calamity. The strange manner of the Countess, the restless misery of the Earl, whom they all loved, the busy, bustling, secretly-triumphant air of Father Miles—all denoted some hidden working. Father Bevis had been absent for some weeks, and when he returned he wore the appearance of a baffled and out-wearied man.
“He looks both tired and disappointed,” remarked Clarice to Heliet.
“He looks,” said Heliet, “like a man who had been trying very hard to scale the wall of a tower, and had been flung back, bruised and helpless, upon the stones below.”
During the four months last spent at Oakham, Clarice had been absolutely silent to Heliet on the subject of her own peculiar trouble. Perhaps she might have remained so, had it not been for the approaching separation. But her lips were unsealed by the strong possibility that they might never meet again. It was late on the last evening that Clarice spoke, as she sat rocking Rose’s cradle. She laid bare her heart before Heliet’s sympathising eyes, until she could trace the whole weary journey through the arid desert sands.
“And now tell me, friend,” Clarice ended, “why our Lord deals so differently with thee and with me. Are we not both His children? Yet to thee He hath given the desire of thine heart, and on mine He lays His hand, and says, ‘No, child, thou must not have it.’”
“I suppose, beloved,” was Heliet’s gentle answer, “that the treatment suitable for consumption will not answer for fever. We are both sick of the deadly disease of sin; but it takes a different development in each. Shall we wonder if the Physician bleeds the one, and administers strengthening medicines to the other?”
Clarice’s lip quivered, but she rocked Rose’s cradle without answering.
“There is also another consideration,” pursued Heliet. “If I mistake not—to alter the figure—we have arrived at different points in our education. If one of us can but decline ‘puer,’ while the other is half through the syntax, is it any wonder if the same lesson be not given to us to learn? Dear Clarice, all God’s children need keeping down. I have been kept down all these years by my physical sufferings. That is not appointed to thee; thou art tried in another way. Shall we either marvel or murmur because our Father sees that each needs a different class of discipline?”
“Oh, Heliet, if I might have had thine! It seems to me so much the lighter cross to carry.”
“Then, dear, I am the less honoured—the further from the full share of the fellowship of our Lord’s sufferings.”
Clarice shook her head as if she hardly saw it in that light.
“Clarice, let me tell thee a parable which I read the other day in the writings of the holy Fathers. There were once two monks, dwelling in hermits’ cells near to each other, each of whom had one choice tree given him to cultivate. When this had lasted a year, the tree of the one was in flourishing health, while that of the other was all stunted and bare. ‘Why, brother,’ said the first, ‘what hast thou done to thy tree?’ ‘Now, judge thou, my brother,’ replied the second, ‘if I could possibly have done more for my tree than I have done. I watched it carefully every day. When I thought it looked dry, I prayed for rain; when the ground was too wet, I prayed for dry weather; I prayed for north wind or south wind, as I saw them needed. All that I asked, I received; and yet look at my poor tree! But how didst thou treat thine? for thy plan has been so much more successful than mine that I would fain try it next year.’ The other monk said only, ‘I prayed God to make my tree flourish, and left it to Him to send what weather He saw good.’”
“He has sent a bitter blast from the north-east,” answered Clarice, with trembling lips.
“And a hedge to shelter the root of the tree,” said Heliet, pointing to Rose.
“Oh, my little Rosie!” exclaimed Clarice, kissing the child passionately. “But if God were to take her, Heliet, what would become of me?”
“Do not meet trouble half way, dear,” said Heliet, gently. “There is no apparent likelihood of any such thing.”
“I do not meet it—it comes!” cried poor Clarice.
“Then wait till it comes. ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’”
“Yet when one has learned by experience that evil is perpetually coming, how can one help looking forward to the morrow?”
“Look forward,” said Heliet. “But let it be to the day after to-morrow—the day when we shall awake up after Christ’s likeness, and be satisfied with it—when the Lord our God shall come, and all the saints with Him. Dear, a gem cannot be engraved without the cutting-tools. Wouldst thou rather be spared the pain of the cutting than have Christ’s likeness graven upon thee?”
“Oh, could it not be done with less cutting?”
“Yes—and more faintly graven then.”
Clarice sobbed, without speaking.
“If the likeness is to be in high relief, so that all men may see it, and recognise the resemblance, and applaud the graver, Clarice, the tool must cut deep.”
“If one could ever know that it was nearly done, it would be easier to bear it.”
“Ay, but how if the vision were granted us, and we saw that it was not nearly done by many a year? It is better not to know, dear. Yet it is natural to us all to think that it would be far easier if we could see. Therefore the more ‘blessed is he that hath not seen, and yet hath believed.’”
“I do think,” said poor Clarice, drearily, “that I must be the worst tried of all His people.”
“Clarice,” answered Heliet, in a low voice, “I believe there is one in this very castle far worse tried than thou—a cross borne which is ten times heavier than thine, and has no rose-bud twined around it. And it is carried with the patience of an angel, with the unselfish forgetfulness of Christ. The tool is going very deep there, and already the portrait stands out in beautiful relief. And that cross will never be laid down till the sufferer parts with it at the very gate of Heaven. At least, so it seems to me. As the years go on it grows heavier, and it is crushing him almost into the dust now.”
“Whom dost thou mean, Heliet?”
“The Lord Earl, our master.”
“I can see he is sorely tried; but I never quite understand what his trouble is.”
“The sorrow of being actively hated by the only one whom he loves. The prospect of being left to die, in wifeless and childless loneliness—that terrible loneliness of soul which is so much worse to bear than any mere physical solitude. God, for some wise reason, has shut him up to Himself. He has deprived him of all human relationship and human love; has said to him, ‘Lean on Me, and walk loose from all other ties.’ A wedded man in the eyes of the world, God has called him in reality to be an anchorite of the Order of Providence, to follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. And unless mine eyes see very wrongly into the future—as would God they did!—the Master is about to lead this dear servant into the Gethsemane of His passion, that he may be fashioned like Him in all things. Ah, Clarice, that takes close cutting!”
“Heliet, what dost thou mean? Canst thou guess what the Lady is about to do?”
“I think she is going to leave him.”
“Alone?—for ever?”
“For earth,” said Heliet, softly. “God be thanked, that is not for ever.”
“What an intensely cruel woman she is!” cried Clarice, indignantly.
“Because, I believe, she is a most miserable one.”
“Canst thou feel any pity for her?”
“It is not so easy as for him. Yet I suspect she needs it even more than he does. Christ have mercy on them both!”
“I cannot comprehend it,” said Clarice.
“I will tell thee one thing,” answered Heliet. “I would rather change with thee than with Sir Edmund the Earl; and a hundred times rather with thee than with the Lady Margaret. It is hard to suffer; but it is worse to be the occasion of suffering. Let me die a thousand times over with Saint Stephen, before I keep the clothes of the persecutors with Saul.”
Clarice stooped and lifted the child from the cradle.
“It is growing late,” she said. “I suppose we ought not to be up longer. Good-night, sweetheart, and many thanks for thy counsel. It is all true, I know; yet—”
“In twenty years, may be—or at the longest, when thou hast seen His Face in righteousness—dear Clarice, thou wilt know it, and want to add no yet.”
The soft tap of Heliet’s crutches had died away, but Clarice stood still with the child in her arms.
“It must be yet now, however,” she said, half aloud. “Do Thy will with me—cut me and perfect me; but, O God, leave me, leave me Rosie!”