Chapter Eight.

Chapter Eight.The Veil uplifted.“Household names, that used to flutterThrough your laughter unawares,—God’s Divine Name ye can utterWith less trembling, in your prayers.”Elizabeth B. Browning.Philippa sat down again with the book in her hand. Her mood had changed suddenly at the sight of the text, which she instantly guessed to be the original of her well-remembered device.“I need not go yet,” she said, “unless I weary you, Mother.”“I am never wearied of the Master’s work,” answered the low voice.Lady Sergeaux opened the door of the cell.“Lena and Oliver,” she called, “you can return to the convent, and come hither for me again ere the dusk falleth. I shall abide a season with this holy Mother.”“But your Ladyship will ere that be faint for hunger,” objected Lena.“No,—I will take care of that,” replied the Grey Lady, ere Philippa could answer.Lena louted, and departed with Oliver, and her mistress again closed the door of the cell. The Grey Lady set bread before her, and honey, with a cup of milk, bidding her eat.“Thank you, Mother, but I am not hungry yet,” said Philippa.“You ought to be. You had better eat,” was the quiet answer.And quiet as the voice was, it had a tone of authority which Philippa involuntarily and unconsciously obeyed. And while she ate, her hostess in her turn became the questioner.“Are you a knight’s wife?”“I am the wife of Sir Richard Sergeaux, a knight of Cornwall,” said Philippa. “My lord is away in Gascony, in the train of the Earl of Arundel, who accompanies the Duke of Lancaster, at present Governor of those parts. While he is absent, I hope to be able to make my salvation in retreat, and to quiet my conscience.”The Grey Lady made no reply. Philippa almost expected her to ask if her conscience were quiet, or how much of her salvation she had made. Guy of Ashridge, she thought, would have preached a sermon on that text. But no answer came from the veiled figure, only her head drooped upon her hand as if she were tired.“Now I am wearying you,” said Philippa reproachfully. “I ought to have gone when I first thought thereof.”“No,” said the Grey Lady.Her voice, if possible, was even softer than before, but Philippa could not avoid detecting in it a cadence of pain so intense that she began to wonder if she were ill, or what portion of her speech could possibly have caused it.“Are you ill, Mother?” she asked compassionately.The eremitess lifted her head; and her voice was again calm.“I thank you,—no. Let us not speak of ourselves, but of God.”“Mother, I wish to ask you something,” said Philippa rather doubtfully, for she did not wish to pain her again, yet she deemed her coming question necessary.“Ask what you will, Lady de Sergeaux.”There was no sad cadence now in the gentle voice.“I desire to know—for so only can you really help me—if you know yourself what it is to be unloved.”Once more Philippa saw the grey veil tremble.“I know it—well.” But the words were uttered scarcely above a whisper.“I meant to ask you that at first, and we name upon another subject. But I am satisfied if you know it. And now tell me, how may any be content under such a trial? How may a weary, thirsting heart, come to drink of that water which he that drinketh shall thirst no more? Mother, all my life I have been drinking of many wells, but I never yet came to this Well. ‘Ancor soyf j’ay:’ tell me how I must labour, where I must go, to find that Well whereof the drinker“‘Jamays soyf n’auraA l’éternité’?”“Who taught you those lines?” asked the eremitess quickly.“I found them in the device of a jewel,” replied Philippa.“Strange!” said the recluse; but she did not explain why she thought it so. “Lady, the Living Water is the gift of God; or rather, it is God. And the heart of man was never meant to be satisfied with anything beneath God.”“But the heart of woman, at least,” said Philippa, “for I am not a man—is often satisfied with things beneath God.”“It often rests in them,” said the Grey Lady; “but I doubt whether it is satisfied. That is a strong word. Are you?”“I am most unsatisfied,” answered Philippa; “otherwise I had not come to you. I want rest.”“And yet Christ hath been saying all your life, to you, as to others,—‘Come unto Me, all ye that travail and are weary laden, and I will give you rest.’”“He never gave it me.”“Because you never came for it.”“I wonder if He can give it,” said Philippa, sighing.“Trust me that He can. I never knew it till I came to Him.”“But are you at rest? You scarcely looked so just now.”“At rest,” said the Grey Lady, “except when a breeze of earth stirs the soul which should be soaring above earth—when the dreams of earth come like a thick curtain between that soul and the hope of that Heaven—as it was just now.”“Then you are not exempt from that?”“In coming to Christ for rest, we do not leave our human hearts and our human infirmities behind us—assuredly not.”“Then do you think it wrong to desire to beloved?”“Not wrong to desire Christ’s love.”“But to desire the love of some human being, or of any human being?”The eremitess paused an instant before she answered.“I should condemn myself if I said so,” she replied in a low tone, the sad cadence returning to her voice. “I must leave that with God. He hath undertaken to purge me from sin, and He knows what is sin. If that be so, He will purge me from it. I have put myself in His hands, to be dealt with as pleaseth Him; and my Physician will give me the medicines which He seeth me to need. Let me counsel you to do the same.”“Yet what pleaseth Him might not please me.”“It would be strange if it did.”“Why?” said Philippa.“Because it is your nature to love sin, and it is His nature to love holiness. And what we love, we become. He that loveth sin must needs be a sinner.”“I do not think I love sin,” rejoined Philippa, rather offended.“That is because you cannot see yourself.”Just what Guy of Ashridge had told her; but not more palatable now than it had been then.“What is sin?” asked the Grey Lady.Philippa was ready with a list—of sins which she felt certain she had not committed.“Give me leave to add one,” said the eremitess. “Pride is sin; nay, it is the abominable sin which God hateth. And is there no pride in you, Lady de Sergeaux? You tell me you cannot forgive your own father. Now I know nothing of you, nor of him; but if you could see yourself as you stand in God’s sight—whatever it be that he hath done—you would know yourself to be as black a sinner as he. Where, then, is your superiority? You have as much need to be forgiven.”“But I havenot!” cried Philippa, in no dulcet tones, her annoyance getting the better of her civility. “I never was a murderer! I never turned coldly away from one that loved me—for none ever did love me. I never crushed a loving, faithful heart down into the dust. I never brought a child up like a stranger. I never—stay, I will go no further into the catalogue. But I know I am not such a sinner as he—nay, I am not to be compared to him.”“And have you,” asked the Grey Lady, very gently, “turned no cold ear to the loving voice of Christ? Have you not kept far away from the heavenly Father? Have you not grieved the Holy Spirit of God? May it not be said to you, as our Lord said to the Jews of old time,—‘Ye will not come to Me, that ye might have life’?”It was only what Guy of Ashridge had said before. But this time there seemed to be a power with the words which had not gone with his. Philippa was silent. She had no answer to make.“You are right,” she said after a long pause. “I have done all this; but I never saw it before. Mother, the next time you are at the holy mass, will you pray for me?”“Why wait till then?” was the rejoinder. “Let us tell Him so now.”And, surprised as she was at the proposal, Philippa knelt down.“Thank you, and the holy saints bless you,” she said, as she rose. “Now I must go; and I hear Lena’s voice without. But ere I depart, may I ask you one thing?”“Anything.”“What could I possibly have said that pained you? For that something did pain you I am sure. I am sorry for it, whatever it may have been.”The soft voice resumed its troubled tone.“It was only,” said the Grey Lady, “that you uttered a name which has not been named in mine hearing for twenty-seven years: you told me where, and doing what, was one of whom and of whose doings I had thought never to hear any more. One, of whom I try never to think, save when I am praying for him, or in the night when I am alone with God, and can ask Him to pardon me if I sin.”“But whom did I name?” said Philippa, in an astonished tone. “Have I spoken of any but of my husband? Do you know him?”“I have never heard of him before to-day, nor of you.”“I think I did mention the Duke of Lancaster.”A shake of the head negatived this suggestion.“Well, I named none else,” pursued Philippa, “saving the Earl of Arundel; and you cannot know him.”Even then she felt an intense repugnance to saying, “My father.” But, much to her surprise, the Grey Lady slowly bowed her head.“And in what manner,” began Philippa, “can you know—”But before she uttered another word, a suspicion which almost terrified her began to steal over her. She threw herself on her knees at the feet of the Grey Lady, and grasped her arm tightly.“All the holy saints have mercy upon us!—are you Isabel La Despenser?”It seemed an hour to Philippa ere the answer came. And it came in a tone so low and quivering that she only just heard it.“I was.”And then a great cry of mingled joy and anguish rang through the lonely cell.“Mother! mine own mother! I am Philippa Fitzalan!”There was no cry from Isabel. She only held out her arms; and in an embrace as close and tender as that with which they had parted, the long-separated mother and daughter met.

“Household names, that used to flutterThrough your laughter unawares,—God’s Divine Name ye can utterWith less trembling, in your prayers.”Elizabeth B. Browning.

“Household names, that used to flutterThrough your laughter unawares,—God’s Divine Name ye can utterWith less trembling, in your prayers.”Elizabeth B. Browning.

Philippa sat down again with the book in her hand. Her mood had changed suddenly at the sight of the text, which she instantly guessed to be the original of her well-remembered device.

“I need not go yet,” she said, “unless I weary you, Mother.”

“I am never wearied of the Master’s work,” answered the low voice.

Lady Sergeaux opened the door of the cell.

“Lena and Oliver,” she called, “you can return to the convent, and come hither for me again ere the dusk falleth. I shall abide a season with this holy Mother.”

“But your Ladyship will ere that be faint for hunger,” objected Lena.

“No,—I will take care of that,” replied the Grey Lady, ere Philippa could answer.

Lena louted, and departed with Oliver, and her mistress again closed the door of the cell. The Grey Lady set bread before her, and honey, with a cup of milk, bidding her eat.

“Thank you, Mother, but I am not hungry yet,” said Philippa.

“You ought to be. You had better eat,” was the quiet answer.

And quiet as the voice was, it had a tone of authority which Philippa involuntarily and unconsciously obeyed. And while she ate, her hostess in her turn became the questioner.

“Are you a knight’s wife?”

“I am the wife of Sir Richard Sergeaux, a knight of Cornwall,” said Philippa. “My lord is away in Gascony, in the train of the Earl of Arundel, who accompanies the Duke of Lancaster, at present Governor of those parts. While he is absent, I hope to be able to make my salvation in retreat, and to quiet my conscience.”

The Grey Lady made no reply. Philippa almost expected her to ask if her conscience were quiet, or how much of her salvation she had made. Guy of Ashridge, she thought, would have preached a sermon on that text. But no answer came from the veiled figure, only her head drooped upon her hand as if she were tired.

“Now I am wearying you,” said Philippa reproachfully. “I ought to have gone when I first thought thereof.”

“No,” said the Grey Lady.

Her voice, if possible, was even softer than before, but Philippa could not avoid detecting in it a cadence of pain so intense that she began to wonder if she were ill, or what portion of her speech could possibly have caused it.

“Are you ill, Mother?” she asked compassionately.

The eremitess lifted her head; and her voice was again calm.

“I thank you,—no. Let us not speak of ourselves, but of God.”

“Mother, I wish to ask you something,” said Philippa rather doubtfully, for she did not wish to pain her again, yet she deemed her coming question necessary.

“Ask what you will, Lady de Sergeaux.”

There was no sad cadence now in the gentle voice.

“I desire to know—for so only can you really help me—if you know yourself what it is to be unloved.”

Once more Philippa saw the grey veil tremble.

“I know it—well.” But the words were uttered scarcely above a whisper.

“I meant to ask you that at first, and we name upon another subject. But I am satisfied if you know it. And now tell me, how may any be content under such a trial? How may a weary, thirsting heart, come to drink of that water which he that drinketh shall thirst no more? Mother, all my life I have been drinking of many wells, but I never yet came to this Well. ‘Ancor soyf j’ay:’ tell me how I must labour, where I must go, to find that Well whereof the drinker

“‘Jamays soyf n’auraA l’éternité’?”

“‘Jamays soyf n’auraA l’éternité’?”

“Who taught you those lines?” asked the eremitess quickly.

“I found them in the device of a jewel,” replied Philippa.

“Strange!” said the recluse; but she did not explain why she thought it so. “Lady, the Living Water is the gift of God; or rather, it is God. And the heart of man was never meant to be satisfied with anything beneath God.”

“But the heart of woman, at least,” said Philippa, “for I am not a man—is often satisfied with things beneath God.”

“It often rests in them,” said the Grey Lady; “but I doubt whether it is satisfied. That is a strong word. Are you?”

“I am most unsatisfied,” answered Philippa; “otherwise I had not come to you. I want rest.”

“And yet Christ hath been saying all your life, to you, as to others,—‘Come unto Me, all ye that travail and are weary laden, and I will give you rest.’”

“He never gave it me.”

“Because you never came for it.”

“I wonder if He can give it,” said Philippa, sighing.

“Trust me that He can. I never knew it till I came to Him.”

“But are you at rest? You scarcely looked so just now.”

“At rest,” said the Grey Lady, “except when a breeze of earth stirs the soul which should be soaring above earth—when the dreams of earth come like a thick curtain between that soul and the hope of that Heaven—as it was just now.”

“Then you are not exempt from that?”

“In coming to Christ for rest, we do not leave our human hearts and our human infirmities behind us—assuredly not.”

“Then do you think it wrong to desire to beloved?”

“Not wrong to desire Christ’s love.”

“But to desire the love of some human being, or of any human being?”

The eremitess paused an instant before she answered.

“I should condemn myself if I said so,” she replied in a low tone, the sad cadence returning to her voice. “I must leave that with God. He hath undertaken to purge me from sin, and He knows what is sin. If that be so, He will purge me from it. I have put myself in His hands, to be dealt with as pleaseth Him; and my Physician will give me the medicines which He seeth me to need. Let me counsel you to do the same.”

“Yet what pleaseth Him might not please me.”

“It would be strange if it did.”

“Why?” said Philippa.

“Because it is your nature to love sin, and it is His nature to love holiness. And what we love, we become. He that loveth sin must needs be a sinner.”

“I do not think I love sin,” rejoined Philippa, rather offended.

“That is because you cannot see yourself.”

Just what Guy of Ashridge had told her; but not more palatable now than it had been then.

“What is sin?” asked the Grey Lady.

Philippa was ready with a list—of sins which she felt certain she had not committed.

“Give me leave to add one,” said the eremitess. “Pride is sin; nay, it is the abominable sin which God hateth. And is there no pride in you, Lady de Sergeaux? You tell me you cannot forgive your own father. Now I know nothing of you, nor of him; but if you could see yourself as you stand in God’s sight—whatever it be that he hath done—you would know yourself to be as black a sinner as he. Where, then, is your superiority? You have as much need to be forgiven.”

“But I havenot!” cried Philippa, in no dulcet tones, her annoyance getting the better of her civility. “I never was a murderer! I never turned coldly away from one that loved me—for none ever did love me. I never crushed a loving, faithful heart down into the dust. I never brought a child up like a stranger. I never—stay, I will go no further into the catalogue. But I know I am not such a sinner as he—nay, I am not to be compared to him.”

“And have you,” asked the Grey Lady, very gently, “turned no cold ear to the loving voice of Christ? Have you not kept far away from the heavenly Father? Have you not grieved the Holy Spirit of God? May it not be said to you, as our Lord said to the Jews of old time,—‘Ye will not come to Me, that ye might have life’?”

It was only what Guy of Ashridge had said before. But this time there seemed to be a power with the words which had not gone with his. Philippa was silent. She had no answer to make.

“You are right,” she said after a long pause. “I have done all this; but I never saw it before. Mother, the next time you are at the holy mass, will you pray for me?”

“Why wait till then?” was the rejoinder. “Let us tell Him so now.”

And, surprised as she was at the proposal, Philippa knelt down.

“Thank you, and the holy saints bless you,” she said, as she rose. “Now I must go; and I hear Lena’s voice without. But ere I depart, may I ask you one thing?”

“Anything.”

“What could I possibly have said that pained you? For that something did pain you I am sure. I am sorry for it, whatever it may have been.”

The soft voice resumed its troubled tone.

“It was only,” said the Grey Lady, “that you uttered a name which has not been named in mine hearing for twenty-seven years: you told me where, and doing what, was one of whom and of whose doings I had thought never to hear any more. One, of whom I try never to think, save when I am praying for him, or in the night when I am alone with God, and can ask Him to pardon me if I sin.”

“But whom did I name?” said Philippa, in an astonished tone. “Have I spoken of any but of my husband? Do you know him?”

“I have never heard of him before to-day, nor of you.”

“I think I did mention the Duke of Lancaster.”

A shake of the head negatived this suggestion.

“Well, I named none else,” pursued Philippa, “saving the Earl of Arundel; and you cannot know him.”

Even then she felt an intense repugnance to saying, “My father.” But, much to her surprise, the Grey Lady slowly bowed her head.

“And in what manner,” began Philippa, “can you know—”

But before she uttered another word, a suspicion which almost terrified her began to steal over her. She threw herself on her knees at the feet of the Grey Lady, and grasped her arm tightly.

“All the holy saints have mercy upon us!—are you Isabel La Despenser?”

It seemed an hour to Philippa ere the answer came. And it came in a tone so low and quivering that she only just heard it.

“I was.”

And then a great cry of mingled joy and anguish rang through the lonely cell.

“Mother! mine own mother! I am Philippa Fitzalan!”

There was no cry from Isabel. She only held out her arms; and in an embrace as close and tender as that with which they had parted, the long-separated mother and daughter met.

Chapter Nine.Together.“Woe to the eye that sheds no tears -No tears for God to wipe away!”“G.E.M.”“And is it so hard to forgive?” asked the soft voice of Isabel.“I will try, but it seems impossible,” responded Philippa. “How can any forgive injuries that reach down to the very root of the heart and life?”“My child,” said Isabel, “he that injureth followeth after Satan; but he that forgiveth followeth after God. It is because our great debt to God is too mighty for our bounded sight, and we cannot reach to the ends thereof, that we are so ready to require of our fellow-debtors the small and sorry sum owed to ourselves. ‘He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?’ And can any love and yet not forgive?”“It is sometimes easier to love one ere he be seen than after,” said Philippa, sarcastically.Isabel smiled rather sadly, for the latent thought in her daughter’s mind was only too apparent to her. Had Philippa known as little of her father as of her mother, her feeling towards him would have been far less bitter. But there was no other answer. Even though twenty-seven years lay between that day and the June morning on which she had quitted Arundel, Isabel could not trust herself to speak of Richard Fitzalan. She dared not run the risk of re-opening the wound, by looking to see whether it had healed.“Mother,” said Philippa suddenly, “thou wilt come with me to Kilquyt?”“For a time,” answered Isabel, “if thine husband assent thereto.”“I shall not ask him,” said Philippa, with a slight pout.“Then I shall not go,” replied Isabel quietly. “I will not enter his house without his permission.”Philippa’s surprise and disappointment were legible in her face.“But, mother, thou knowest not my lord,” she interposed. “There is not in all the world a man more wearisome to dwell withal. Every thing I do, he dislikes; and every thing I wish to do, he forbids. I am thankful for his absence, for when he is at home, from dawn to dusk he doth nought save to find fault with me.”But, notwithstanding her remonstrance, Philippa had fathomed her mother’s motive in thus answering. Sir Richard possessed little of his own; he was almost wholly dependent on the Earl her father; and had it pleased that gentleman to revoke his grant of manors to herself and her husband, they would have been almost ruined. And Philippa knew quite enough of Earl Richard the Copped-Hat to be aware that few tidings would be so unwelcome at Arundel as those which conveyed the fact of Isabel’s presence at Kilquyt. Her mother’s uplifted hand stopped her from saying more.“Hush, my daughter!” said the low voice. “Repay not thou by finding fault in return. ‘What glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.’”“I am not so patient as you, mother,” answered Philippa, shaking her head. “Perhaps it were better for me if I were. But dost thou mean that I must really ask my lord’s leave ere thou wilt come with me?”“I do mean it.”“And thou sayest, ‘for a time’—wilt thou not dwell with me?”“The vows of the Lord are upon me,” replied Isabel, gravely. “I cannot forsake the place wherein He hath set me, the work which He hath given me to do. I will visit thee, and my sister also; but that done, I must return hither.”“But dost thou mean to live and die in yonder cell?”It was in the recreation-room of the Convent that they were conversing.“Even so, my daughter.” (See Note 1.)Philippa’s countenance fell. It seemed very hard to part again when they had but just found each other. If this were religion, it must be difficult work to be religious. Yet she was more disappointed than surprised, especially when the first momentary annoyance was past.“My child,” said Isabel softly, seeing her disappointment, “if I err in thus speaking, I pray God to pardon me. I can but follow what I see right; and ‘to him that esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.’ How can I forsake the hearts that look to me for help throughout this valley? And if thou have need of me, thou canst always come, or send for me.”This gentle, apologetic explanation touched Philippa the more, because she felt that in the like case, she could not herself have condescended to make it.The next thing to be done was to write to Sir Richard. This Philippa was unable to do personally, since the art of handling the pen had formed no part of her education. Her mother did it for her; for Isabel had been solidly and elaborately instructed by Giles de Edingdon, under the superintendence of the King’s Confessor, Luke de Wodeford, also a Predicant Friar. The letter had to be directed very much at random,—to “Sir Richard Sergeaux, of the Duke of Lancaster’s following, at Bordeaux, or wherever he may be found.” Fortunately for Philippa, the Prior of the neighbouring monastery was just despatching his cellarer to London on conventual business: and he undertook to convey her letter to the Savoy Palace, whence it would be forwarded with the next despatches sent to John of Gaunt. Philippa, in whose name the letter was written, requested her husband to reply to her at Shaftesbury, whither she and Isabel meant to proceed at once.The spring was in its full beauty when they reached Shaftesbury. Philippa had not found an opportunity to let the Abbess know of her coming, but she was very cordially welcomed by that good-natured dame. The recreation-bell sounded while they were conversing, and at Philippa’s desire the Abbess sent for Mother Joan to the guest-chamber. Sister Senicula led her in.“How is it with you, Aunt?” said Philippa affectionately. “I have returned hither, as you may hear.”“Ah! Is it thou, child?” said the blind nun in answer. “I fare reasonably well, as a blind woman may. I am glad thou hast come hither again.”It evidently cost Isabel much to make herself known to the sister from whom she had parted in such painful circumstances, thirty-seven years before. For a few moments longer, she did not speak, and Philippa waited for her. At last Isabel said in a choked voice—“Sister Joan!”“Holy Virgin!” exclaimed the blind woman; “who called me that?”“One that thou knewest once,” answered Isabel’s quivering voice.“From Heaven?” cried Joan almost wildly. “Can the dead come back again?” And she stretched forth her hands in the direction from which the sound of her sister’s voice had come.“No, but the living may,” said Isabel, kneeling down by her, and clasping her arms around her.“Isabel!” And Joan’s trembling hands were passed over her face, as if to assure herself that her ears had not deceived her. “It can be no voice but thine. Holy Virgin, I thank thee!”The Abbess broke in, in a manner which, though well-meant, was exceedingly ill-timed and in bad taste. She was kindly-disposed, but had not the faintest trace of that delicate perception of others’ feelings, and consideration for them, which constitutes the real difference between Nature’s ladies and such as are not ladies.“Verily, to think that this holy Mother and our Mother Joan be sisters!” cried she, “I remember somewhat of your history, my holy Sister: are you not she that was sometime Countess of Arundel?”Philippa saw how Isabel trembled from head to foot; but she knew not what to say. Joan La Despenser was equal to the emergency.“Holy Mother,” she said quietly, “would it please you, of your great goodness, to permit me to remain here during the recreation-hour with my sister? I am assured we shall have much to say each to other, if we may have your blessed allowance to speak freely after this manner.”“Be it so, Sister,” said the Abbess, smiling genially; “I will see to our sisters in the recreation-chamber.”A long conversation followed the departure of the Abbess. Joan took up the history where she had parted from Isabel, and told what had been her own lot since then; and Isabel in her turn recounted her story—neither a long nor an eventful one; for it told only how she had been taken to Sempringham by the page, and had there settled herself, in the hermit’s cell which happened to be vacant.When Philippa was lying awake that night, her thoughts were troublous ones. Not only did she very much doubt Sir Richard’s consent to her mother’s visit to Kilquyt; but another question was puzzling her exceedingly. How far was it desirable to inform Isabel of the death of Alianora? She had noticed how the unfortunate remark of the Abbess had agitated her mother; and she also observed that when Joan came to speak to Isabel herself, she was totally silent concerning Earl Richard. The uncomplimentary adjectives which she had not spared in speaking to Philippa were utterly discarded now. Would it not do at least as much harm as good to revive the old memories of pain by telling her this? Philippa decided to remain silent.The summer was passing away, and the autumn hues were slowly creeping over the forest, when Sir Richard’s answer arrived at Shaftesbury. It was not a pleasing missive; but it would have cost Philippa more tears if it had made her less angry. That gentleman had not written in a good temper; but he was not without excuse, for he had suffered something himself. He had not dared to reply to Philippa’s entreaty, without seeking in his turn the permission of the Earl of Arundel, in whose hands his fortune lay to make or mar. And, by one of those uncomfortable coincidences which have led to the proverb that “Misfortunes never come single,” it so happened that the news of the Countess’s death had reached the Earl on the very morning whereon Sir Richard laid Philippa’s letter before him. The result was that there broke on the devoted head of Sir Richard a tempest of ungovernable rage, so extremely unpleasant in character that he might be excused for his anxiety to avoid provoking a second edition of it. The Earl was grieved—so far as a nature like his could entertain grief—to lose his second wife; but to find that the first wife had been discovered, and by her daughter, possessed the additional character of insult. That the occurrence was accidental did not alter matters. Words would not content the aggrieved mourner: his hand sought the hilt of his sword, and Sir Richard, thinking discretion the better part of valour, made his way, as quickly as the laws of matter and space allowed him, out of the terrible presence whereinto he had rashly ventured. Feeling himself wholly innocent of any provocation, it was not surprising that he should proceed to dictate a letter to his wife, scarcely calculated to gratify her feelings. Thus ran the offending document:—“Dame,—Your epistle hath reached mine hands, (see Note 2) wherein it hath pleased you to give me to know of your finding of the Lady Isabel La Despenser, your fair mother, (see Note 3) and likewise of your desire that she should visit you at my Manor of Kilquyt. Know therefore, that I can in no wise assent to the same. For I am assured that it should provoke, and that in no small degree, the wrath of your fair father, my gracious Lord of Arundel: and I hereby charge you, on your obedience, so soon as you shall receive this my letter, that you return home, and tarry no longer at Shaftesbury nor Sempringham. Know that I fare reasonably well, and Eustace my squire; and your fair father likewise, saving that he hath showed much anger towards you and me. And thus, praying God and our blessed Lady, and Saint Peter and Saint Paul, to keep you. I rest.“R. Sergeaux.”The entire epistle was written by a scribe, for Sir Richard was as innocent of the art of calligraphy as Philippa herself; and the appending of his seal was the only part of the letter achieved by his own hand.Philippa read the note three times before she communicated its contents to any one. The first time, it was with feelings of bitter anger towards both her father and her husband; the second, her view of her father’s conduct remained unchanged, but she began to see that Sir Richard, from his own point of view, was not without reasonable excuse for his refusal, and that considering the annoyance he had himself suffered, his letter was moderate and even tolerably kind,—kind, that is, for him. After the third perusal, Philippa carried the letter to Joan, and read it to her—not in Isabel’s presence.“What a fool wert thou, child,” said Joan, with her usual bluntness, “to send to thy lord concerning this matter! Well, what is done, is done. I had looked for no better had I known of it.”Philippa did not read the letter to her mother. She merely told her the substance; that Sir Richard would not permit her to receive her at Kilquyt, and that he had ordered her home without delay. Isabel’s lip quivered a moment, but the next instant she smiled.“I am not surprised, my child,” she said. “Take heed, and obey.” It was hard work to obey. Hard, to part with Joan; harder yet, to leave Isabel in her lonely cell at Sempringham, and to go forward on the as lonely journey to Kilquyt. Perhaps hardest of all was the last night in the recreation-room at Sempringham. Isabel and Philippa sat by themselves in a corner, the hand of the eremitess clasped in that of her daughter.“But how do you account for all the sorrow that is in the world?” Philippa had been saying. “Take my life, for instance, or your own, mother. God could have given us very pleasant lives, if it had pleased Him; why did He not do so? How can it augur love, to take out of our way all things loved or loving?”“My daughter,” answered Isabel, “I am assured—and the longer I live the more assured I am—that the way which God marketh out for each one of His chosen is the right way, the best way, and for that one the only way. Every pang given to us, if we be Christ’s, is a pang that could not be spared. ‘As He was, so are we in this world;’ and with us, as with Him, ‘thus itmustbe.’ All our Lord’s followers wear His crown of thorns; but theirs, under His loving hand, bud and flower; which His never did, till He could cry upon the rood, ‘It is finished.’”“But could not God,” said Philippa, a little timidly, “have given us more grace to avoid sinning, rather than have needed thus to burn our sins out of us with hot irons?”“Thou art soaring up into the seventh Heaven of God’s purposes, my child,” answered Isabel with a smile; “I have no wings to follow thee so far.”“Thou thinkest, then, mother,” replied Philippa with a sigh, “that we cannot understand the matter at all.”“We can understand only what is revealed to us,” replied Isabel; “and that, I grant, is but little; yet it is enough. ‘As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten.’ ‘What son is he whom the father chasteneth not?’ How could it be otherwise? He were no wise father nor loving, who should teach his son nothing, or should forbear to rebuke him for such folly as might hereafter be his ruin.”Isabel was silent, and Philippa’s memory went back to those old loveless days at Arundel, when for her there had been no chastening, no rebuke, only cold, lifeless apathy. That was not love. And she thought also of her half-sister Alesia, whom she had visited once since her marriage, and who brought up her children on the principle of no contradiction and unlimited indulgence; and remembering how discontented and hard to please this discipline had made them, she began to see that was not love either.“Thou hast wrought arras, my daughter,” said Isabel again. “Thou knowest, therefore, that to turn the arras the backward way showeth not the pattern. The colours are all mixed out of proportion, as the fastenings run in and out. So our life is in this world. The arras shall only be turned the right way above, when the angels of God shall see it, and marvel at the fair proportions and beauteous colours of that which looked so rough and misshapen here below.“Moreover, we are thus tried, methinks, not only for our own good. We are sent into this world to serve: to serve God first, and after to serve man for God’s sake. And every blow of the chisel on the stone doth but dress it for its place. God’s chisel never falleth on the wrong place, and never giveth a stroke too much. Every pang fitteth us for more service; and I think thou shouldst find, in most instances, that the higher and greater the service to which the varlet is called, the deeper the previous suffering which fitteth him therefor. And God’s greatnesses are not ours. In His eyes, a poor serving-maiden may have a loftier and more difficult task than a lord of the King’s Council, or a Marshal of the army.“And after all, every sorrow and perplexity, be it large or small, doth but give God’s child an errand to his Father. Nothing is too little to bear to His ear, if it be not too little to distress and perplex His servant. To Him all things pertaining to this life are small—the cloth of estate no less than the blade of grass; and all things pertaining to that other and better life in His blessed Home, are great and mighty. Yet we think the first great, and the last little. And therefore things become great that belong to the first life, just in proportion as they bear upon the second. Nothing is small that becomes to thee an occasion of sin; nothing, that can be made an incentive to holiness.”“O mother, mother!” said Philippa, with a sudden sharp shoot of pain, “to-morrow I shall be far away from you, and none will teach me any more!”“God will teach thee Himself, my child,” said Isabel tenderly. “He can teach far better than I. Only be thou not weary of His lessons; nor refuse to learn them. Maybe thou canst not see the use of many of them till they are learned; but ‘thou shalt know hereafter.’ Thou shalt find many a thorn in the way; but remember, it is not set there in anger, if thou be Christ’s; and many a flower shall spring up under thy feet, when thou art not looking for it. Only do thou never loose thine hold on Him, who has promised never to loose His on thee. Not that thou shouldst be lost in so doing; He will have a care of that: but thou mightest find thyself in the dark, and so far as thou couldst see, alone. It is sin that hides God from man; but nothing can hide man from God.”And Philippa, drawing closer to her, whispered,—“Mother, pray for me.”A very loving smile broke over Isabel’s lips, as she pressed them fondly upon Philippa’s cheek.“Mine own Philippa,” she said, in the softest accent of her soft voice, “dost thou think I have waited thirty years for that?”Note 1. I am aware that this resolution will appear inconsistent with Isabel’s character; yet any other would have been inconsistent with her times. The vows of recluses were held very sacred; and the opinions of the Boni-Homines on the monastic question were little in advance of those of the Church of Rome.Note 2. Had Sir Richard been a peer, he would have said “ourhands.” This style, now exclusively royal, was in 1372 employed by all the nobles.Note 3. This adjective also was peculiar to the peerage and the Royal Family. It was given to every relation except between husband and wife: and the Frenchbeau-pirtforfather-in-lawis doubtless derived from it. Nay, it was conferred on the Deity; and “Fair Father Jesu Christ” was by no means an uncommon title used in prayer. In like manner, Saint Louis, when he prayed, said, “Sire Dieu,” the title of knighthood. Quaint and almost profane as this usage sounds to modern ears, I think their instinct was right: they addressed God in the highest and most reverential terms they knew.

“Woe to the eye that sheds no tears -No tears for God to wipe away!”“G.E.M.”

“Woe to the eye that sheds no tears -No tears for God to wipe away!”“G.E.M.”

“And is it so hard to forgive?” asked the soft voice of Isabel.

“I will try, but it seems impossible,” responded Philippa. “How can any forgive injuries that reach down to the very root of the heart and life?”

“My child,” said Isabel, “he that injureth followeth after Satan; but he that forgiveth followeth after God. It is because our great debt to God is too mighty for our bounded sight, and we cannot reach to the ends thereof, that we are so ready to require of our fellow-debtors the small and sorry sum owed to ourselves. ‘He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?’ And can any love and yet not forgive?”

“It is sometimes easier to love one ere he be seen than after,” said Philippa, sarcastically.

Isabel smiled rather sadly, for the latent thought in her daughter’s mind was only too apparent to her. Had Philippa known as little of her father as of her mother, her feeling towards him would have been far less bitter. But there was no other answer. Even though twenty-seven years lay between that day and the June morning on which she had quitted Arundel, Isabel could not trust herself to speak of Richard Fitzalan. She dared not run the risk of re-opening the wound, by looking to see whether it had healed.

“Mother,” said Philippa suddenly, “thou wilt come with me to Kilquyt?”

“For a time,” answered Isabel, “if thine husband assent thereto.”

“I shall not ask him,” said Philippa, with a slight pout.

“Then I shall not go,” replied Isabel quietly. “I will not enter his house without his permission.”

Philippa’s surprise and disappointment were legible in her face.

“But, mother, thou knowest not my lord,” she interposed. “There is not in all the world a man more wearisome to dwell withal. Every thing I do, he dislikes; and every thing I wish to do, he forbids. I am thankful for his absence, for when he is at home, from dawn to dusk he doth nought save to find fault with me.”

But, notwithstanding her remonstrance, Philippa had fathomed her mother’s motive in thus answering. Sir Richard possessed little of his own; he was almost wholly dependent on the Earl her father; and had it pleased that gentleman to revoke his grant of manors to herself and her husband, they would have been almost ruined. And Philippa knew quite enough of Earl Richard the Copped-Hat to be aware that few tidings would be so unwelcome at Arundel as those which conveyed the fact of Isabel’s presence at Kilquyt. Her mother’s uplifted hand stopped her from saying more.

“Hush, my daughter!” said the low voice. “Repay not thou by finding fault in return. ‘What glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.’”

“I am not so patient as you, mother,” answered Philippa, shaking her head. “Perhaps it were better for me if I were. But dost thou mean that I must really ask my lord’s leave ere thou wilt come with me?”

“I do mean it.”

“And thou sayest, ‘for a time’—wilt thou not dwell with me?”

“The vows of the Lord are upon me,” replied Isabel, gravely. “I cannot forsake the place wherein He hath set me, the work which He hath given me to do. I will visit thee, and my sister also; but that done, I must return hither.”

“But dost thou mean to live and die in yonder cell?”

It was in the recreation-room of the Convent that they were conversing.

“Even so, my daughter.” (See Note 1.)

Philippa’s countenance fell. It seemed very hard to part again when they had but just found each other. If this were religion, it must be difficult work to be religious. Yet she was more disappointed than surprised, especially when the first momentary annoyance was past.

“My child,” said Isabel softly, seeing her disappointment, “if I err in thus speaking, I pray God to pardon me. I can but follow what I see right; and ‘to him that esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.’ How can I forsake the hearts that look to me for help throughout this valley? And if thou have need of me, thou canst always come, or send for me.”

This gentle, apologetic explanation touched Philippa the more, because she felt that in the like case, she could not herself have condescended to make it.

The next thing to be done was to write to Sir Richard. This Philippa was unable to do personally, since the art of handling the pen had formed no part of her education. Her mother did it for her; for Isabel had been solidly and elaborately instructed by Giles de Edingdon, under the superintendence of the King’s Confessor, Luke de Wodeford, also a Predicant Friar. The letter had to be directed very much at random,—to “Sir Richard Sergeaux, of the Duke of Lancaster’s following, at Bordeaux, or wherever he may be found.” Fortunately for Philippa, the Prior of the neighbouring monastery was just despatching his cellarer to London on conventual business: and he undertook to convey her letter to the Savoy Palace, whence it would be forwarded with the next despatches sent to John of Gaunt. Philippa, in whose name the letter was written, requested her husband to reply to her at Shaftesbury, whither she and Isabel meant to proceed at once.

The spring was in its full beauty when they reached Shaftesbury. Philippa had not found an opportunity to let the Abbess know of her coming, but she was very cordially welcomed by that good-natured dame. The recreation-bell sounded while they were conversing, and at Philippa’s desire the Abbess sent for Mother Joan to the guest-chamber. Sister Senicula led her in.

“How is it with you, Aunt?” said Philippa affectionately. “I have returned hither, as you may hear.”

“Ah! Is it thou, child?” said the blind nun in answer. “I fare reasonably well, as a blind woman may. I am glad thou hast come hither again.”

It evidently cost Isabel much to make herself known to the sister from whom she had parted in such painful circumstances, thirty-seven years before. For a few moments longer, she did not speak, and Philippa waited for her. At last Isabel said in a choked voice—“Sister Joan!”

“Holy Virgin!” exclaimed the blind woman; “who called me that?”

“One that thou knewest once,” answered Isabel’s quivering voice.

“From Heaven?” cried Joan almost wildly. “Can the dead come back again?” And she stretched forth her hands in the direction from which the sound of her sister’s voice had come.

“No, but the living may,” said Isabel, kneeling down by her, and clasping her arms around her.

“Isabel!” And Joan’s trembling hands were passed over her face, as if to assure herself that her ears had not deceived her. “It can be no voice but thine. Holy Virgin, I thank thee!”

The Abbess broke in, in a manner which, though well-meant, was exceedingly ill-timed and in bad taste. She was kindly-disposed, but had not the faintest trace of that delicate perception of others’ feelings, and consideration for them, which constitutes the real difference between Nature’s ladies and such as are not ladies.

“Verily, to think that this holy Mother and our Mother Joan be sisters!” cried she, “I remember somewhat of your history, my holy Sister: are you not she that was sometime Countess of Arundel?”

Philippa saw how Isabel trembled from head to foot; but she knew not what to say. Joan La Despenser was equal to the emergency.

“Holy Mother,” she said quietly, “would it please you, of your great goodness, to permit me to remain here during the recreation-hour with my sister? I am assured we shall have much to say each to other, if we may have your blessed allowance to speak freely after this manner.”

“Be it so, Sister,” said the Abbess, smiling genially; “I will see to our sisters in the recreation-chamber.”

A long conversation followed the departure of the Abbess. Joan took up the history where she had parted from Isabel, and told what had been her own lot since then; and Isabel in her turn recounted her story—neither a long nor an eventful one; for it told only how she had been taken to Sempringham by the page, and had there settled herself, in the hermit’s cell which happened to be vacant.

When Philippa was lying awake that night, her thoughts were troublous ones. Not only did she very much doubt Sir Richard’s consent to her mother’s visit to Kilquyt; but another question was puzzling her exceedingly. How far was it desirable to inform Isabel of the death of Alianora? She had noticed how the unfortunate remark of the Abbess had agitated her mother; and she also observed that when Joan came to speak to Isabel herself, she was totally silent concerning Earl Richard. The uncomplimentary adjectives which she had not spared in speaking to Philippa were utterly discarded now. Would it not do at least as much harm as good to revive the old memories of pain by telling her this? Philippa decided to remain silent.

The summer was passing away, and the autumn hues were slowly creeping over the forest, when Sir Richard’s answer arrived at Shaftesbury. It was not a pleasing missive; but it would have cost Philippa more tears if it had made her less angry. That gentleman had not written in a good temper; but he was not without excuse, for he had suffered something himself. He had not dared to reply to Philippa’s entreaty, without seeking in his turn the permission of the Earl of Arundel, in whose hands his fortune lay to make or mar. And, by one of those uncomfortable coincidences which have led to the proverb that “Misfortunes never come single,” it so happened that the news of the Countess’s death had reached the Earl on the very morning whereon Sir Richard laid Philippa’s letter before him. The result was that there broke on the devoted head of Sir Richard a tempest of ungovernable rage, so extremely unpleasant in character that he might be excused for his anxiety to avoid provoking a second edition of it. The Earl was grieved—so far as a nature like his could entertain grief—to lose his second wife; but to find that the first wife had been discovered, and by her daughter, possessed the additional character of insult. That the occurrence was accidental did not alter matters. Words would not content the aggrieved mourner: his hand sought the hilt of his sword, and Sir Richard, thinking discretion the better part of valour, made his way, as quickly as the laws of matter and space allowed him, out of the terrible presence whereinto he had rashly ventured. Feeling himself wholly innocent of any provocation, it was not surprising that he should proceed to dictate a letter to his wife, scarcely calculated to gratify her feelings. Thus ran the offending document:—

“Dame,—Your epistle hath reached mine hands, (see Note 2) wherein it hath pleased you to give me to know of your finding of the Lady Isabel La Despenser, your fair mother, (see Note 3) and likewise of your desire that she should visit you at my Manor of Kilquyt. Know therefore, that I can in no wise assent to the same. For I am assured that it should provoke, and that in no small degree, the wrath of your fair father, my gracious Lord of Arundel: and I hereby charge you, on your obedience, so soon as you shall receive this my letter, that you return home, and tarry no longer at Shaftesbury nor Sempringham. Know that I fare reasonably well, and Eustace my squire; and your fair father likewise, saving that he hath showed much anger towards you and me. And thus, praying God and our blessed Lady, and Saint Peter and Saint Paul, to keep you. I rest.“R. Sergeaux.”

“Dame,—Your epistle hath reached mine hands, (see Note 2) wherein it hath pleased you to give me to know of your finding of the Lady Isabel La Despenser, your fair mother, (see Note 3) and likewise of your desire that she should visit you at my Manor of Kilquyt. Know therefore, that I can in no wise assent to the same. For I am assured that it should provoke, and that in no small degree, the wrath of your fair father, my gracious Lord of Arundel: and I hereby charge you, on your obedience, so soon as you shall receive this my letter, that you return home, and tarry no longer at Shaftesbury nor Sempringham. Know that I fare reasonably well, and Eustace my squire; and your fair father likewise, saving that he hath showed much anger towards you and me. And thus, praying God and our blessed Lady, and Saint Peter and Saint Paul, to keep you. I rest.

“R. Sergeaux.”

The entire epistle was written by a scribe, for Sir Richard was as innocent of the art of calligraphy as Philippa herself; and the appending of his seal was the only part of the letter achieved by his own hand.

Philippa read the note three times before she communicated its contents to any one. The first time, it was with feelings of bitter anger towards both her father and her husband; the second, her view of her father’s conduct remained unchanged, but she began to see that Sir Richard, from his own point of view, was not without reasonable excuse for his refusal, and that considering the annoyance he had himself suffered, his letter was moderate and even tolerably kind,—kind, that is, for him. After the third perusal, Philippa carried the letter to Joan, and read it to her—not in Isabel’s presence.

“What a fool wert thou, child,” said Joan, with her usual bluntness, “to send to thy lord concerning this matter! Well, what is done, is done. I had looked for no better had I known of it.”

Philippa did not read the letter to her mother. She merely told her the substance; that Sir Richard would not permit her to receive her at Kilquyt, and that he had ordered her home without delay. Isabel’s lip quivered a moment, but the next instant she smiled.

“I am not surprised, my child,” she said. “Take heed, and obey.” It was hard work to obey. Hard, to part with Joan; harder yet, to leave Isabel in her lonely cell at Sempringham, and to go forward on the as lonely journey to Kilquyt. Perhaps hardest of all was the last night in the recreation-room at Sempringham. Isabel and Philippa sat by themselves in a corner, the hand of the eremitess clasped in that of her daughter.

“But how do you account for all the sorrow that is in the world?” Philippa had been saying. “Take my life, for instance, or your own, mother. God could have given us very pleasant lives, if it had pleased Him; why did He not do so? How can it augur love, to take out of our way all things loved or loving?”

“My daughter,” answered Isabel, “I am assured—and the longer I live the more assured I am—that the way which God marketh out for each one of His chosen is the right way, the best way, and for that one the only way. Every pang given to us, if we be Christ’s, is a pang that could not be spared. ‘As He was, so are we in this world;’ and with us, as with Him, ‘thus itmustbe.’ All our Lord’s followers wear His crown of thorns; but theirs, under His loving hand, bud and flower; which His never did, till He could cry upon the rood, ‘It is finished.’”

“But could not God,” said Philippa, a little timidly, “have given us more grace to avoid sinning, rather than have needed thus to burn our sins out of us with hot irons?”

“Thou art soaring up into the seventh Heaven of God’s purposes, my child,” answered Isabel with a smile; “I have no wings to follow thee so far.”

“Thou thinkest, then, mother,” replied Philippa with a sigh, “that we cannot understand the matter at all.”

“We can understand only what is revealed to us,” replied Isabel; “and that, I grant, is but little; yet it is enough. ‘As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten.’ ‘What son is he whom the father chasteneth not?’ How could it be otherwise? He were no wise father nor loving, who should teach his son nothing, or should forbear to rebuke him for such folly as might hereafter be his ruin.”

Isabel was silent, and Philippa’s memory went back to those old loveless days at Arundel, when for her there had been no chastening, no rebuke, only cold, lifeless apathy. That was not love. And she thought also of her half-sister Alesia, whom she had visited once since her marriage, and who brought up her children on the principle of no contradiction and unlimited indulgence; and remembering how discontented and hard to please this discipline had made them, she began to see that was not love either.

“Thou hast wrought arras, my daughter,” said Isabel again. “Thou knowest, therefore, that to turn the arras the backward way showeth not the pattern. The colours are all mixed out of proportion, as the fastenings run in and out. So our life is in this world. The arras shall only be turned the right way above, when the angels of God shall see it, and marvel at the fair proportions and beauteous colours of that which looked so rough and misshapen here below.

“Moreover, we are thus tried, methinks, not only for our own good. We are sent into this world to serve: to serve God first, and after to serve man for God’s sake. And every blow of the chisel on the stone doth but dress it for its place. God’s chisel never falleth on the wrong place, and never giveth a stroke too much. Every pang fitteth us for more service; and I think thou shouldst find, in most instances, that the higher and greater the service to which the varlet is called, the deeper the previous suffering which fitteth him therefor. And God’s greatnesses are not ours. In His eyes, a poor serving-maiden may have a loftier and more difficult task than a lord of the King’s Council, or a Marshal of the army.

“And after all, every sorrow and perplexity, be it large or small, doth but give God’s child an errand to his Father. Nothing is too little to bear to His ear, if it be not too little to distress and perplex His servant. To Him all things pertaining to this life are small—the cloth of estate no less than the blade of grass; and all things pertaining to that other and better life in His blessed Home, are great and mighty. Yet we think the first great, and the last little. And therefore things become great that belong to the first life, just in proportion as they bear upon the second. Nothing is small that becomes to thee an occasion of sin; nothing, that can be made an incentive to holiness.”

“O mother, mother!” said Philippa, with a sudden sharp shoot of pain, “to-morrow I shall be far away from you, and none will teach me any more!”

“God will teach thee Himself, my child,” said Isabel tenderly. “He can teach far better than I. Only be thou not weary of His lessons; nor refuse to learn them. Maybe thou canst not see the use of many of them till they are learned; but ‘thou shalt know hereafter.’ Thou shalt find many a thorn in the way; but remember, it is not set there in anger, if thou be Christ’s; and many a flower shall spring up under thy feet, when thou art not looking for it. Only do thou never loose thine hold on Him, who has promised never to loose His on thee. Not that thou shouldst be lost in so doing; He will have a care of that: but thou mightest find thyself in the dark, and so far as thou couldst see, alone. It is sin that hides God from man; but nothing can hide man from God.”

And Philippa, drawing closer to her, whispered,—“Mother, pray for me.”

A very loving smile broke over Isabel’s lips, as she pressed them fondly upon Philippa’s cheek.

“Mine own Philippa,” she said, in the softest accent of her soft voice, “dost thou think I have waited thirty years for that?”

Note 1. I am aware that this resolution will appear inconsistent with Isabel’s character; yet any other would have been inconsistent with her times. The vows of recluses were held very sacred; and the opinions of the Boni-Homines on the monastic question were little in advance of those of the Church of Rome.

Note 2. Had Sir Richard been a peer, he would have said “ourhands.” This style, now exclusively royal, was in 1372 employed by all the nobles.

Note 3. This adjective also was peculiar to the peerage and the Royal Family. It was given to every relation except between husband and wife: and the Frenchbeau-pirtforfather-in-lawis doubtless derived from it. Nay, it was conferred on the Deity; and “Fair Father Jesu Christ” was by no means an uncommon title used in prayer. In like manner, Saint Louis, when he prayed, said, “Sire Dieu,” the title of knighthood. Quaint and almost profane as this usage sounds to modern ears, I think their instinct was right: they addressed God in the highest and most reverential terms they knew.

Chapter Ten.Four years later.“When the shore is won at last,Who will count the billows past?”Keble.It was winter again; and the winds blew harshly and wailingly around the Castle of Arundel. In the stateliest chamber of that Castle, where the hangings were of cramoisie paned with cloth of gold, the evening tapers were burning low, and a black-robed priest knelt beside the bed where an old man lay dying.“I can think of nothing more, Father,” faintly whispered the penitent. “I have confessed every sin that I have ever sinned,so far as my memory serveth: and many men have been worse sinners than I. I never robbed a church in all my wars. I have bequeathed rents and lands to the Priory of God and Saint Pancras at Lewes, for two monks to celebrate day by day masses of our Lady and of the Holy Ghost,—two hundred pounds; and for matins and requiem masses in my chapel here, a thousand marks; and four hundred marks to purchase rent lands for the poor; and all my debts I have had a care to pay. Can I perform any other good work? Will that do, Father?”“Thou canst do nought else, my son,” answered the priest. “Thou hast right nobly purchased the favour of God, and thine own salvation. Thy soul shall pass, white and pure, through the flames of Purgatory, to be triumphantly acquitted at the bar of God.”And lifting his hands in blessing, he pronounced the unholy incantation,—“Absolvo te!”“Thank the saints, and our dear Lady!” feebly responded the dying man. “I am clean and sinless.”Before the morrow dawned on the Conversion of Saint Paul, that old man knew, as he had never known on earth, whether he stood clean and sinless before God or not. There were no bands in that death. The river did not look dark to him; it did not feel cold as his feet touched it. But on the other side what angels met him? and what entrance was accorded, to that sin-defiled and uncleansed soul, into that Land wherein there shall in no wise enter anything that defileth?And so Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, passed away.Two months later,—by a scribe’s letter, written in the name of her half-brother, the young, brave, joyous man upon whose head the old coronet had descended,—the news of the Earl’s death reached Philippa Sergeaux at Kilquyt. Very differently it affected her from the manner in which she would have received it four years before. And very differently from the manner in which it was received by the daughters of Alianora, to whom (though they did not put it into audible words) the real thought of the heart was—“Is the old man really gone at last? Well, it was time he should. Now I shall receive the coronet he left to me, and the two, or three, thousand marks.” For thus he had remembered Joan and Alesia; and thus they remembered him. To Mary he left nothing; a sure sign of offence, but how incurred history remains silent. But to the eldest daughter, whose name was equally unnamed with hers—whose ears heard the news so far away—whose head had never known the fall of his hand in blessing—whose cheek had never been touched by loving lips of his—to Philippa Sergeaux the black serge for which she exchanged her damask robes was real mourning.She did not say now, “I can never forgive my father.” It is not when we are lying low in the dust before the feet of the Great King, oppressed with the intolerable burden of our ten thousand talents, that we feel disposed to rise and take our fellow-servant by the throat, with the pitiless, “Pay me that thou owest.” The offensive “Stand by,—I am holier than thou!” falls only from unholy lips. When the woman that was a sinner went out, washed and forgiven, from that sinless Presence, with the shards of the broken alabaster box in her hand, she was less likely than at any previous time in her life to reproach the fellow-sinners whom she met on her journey home. So, when Philippa Sergeaux’s eyes were opened, and she came to see how much God had forgiven her, the little that she had to forgive her father seemed less than nothing in comparison. She could distinguish now, as previously she could not—but as God does always—between the sin and the sinner; she was able to keep her hatred and loathing for the first, and to regard the second with the deepest pity. And when she thought of the sleep into which she could have little doubt that his soul had been lulled,—of the black awakening “on the brink of the pit,”—there was no room in her heart for any feeling but that of unutterable anguish.They had not sent for her to Arundel. Until she heard that the end was reached, she never knew he was near the end at all.It is not Christianity, but Pharisaism, which would shut up the kingdom of heaven against all but itself. To those who have tasted that the Lord is gracious, it is something more than mere privilege to summon him that is athirst to come. “Necessity is upon them—yea, woe is unto them if they preach not the gospel!” Though no Christian is a priest, every Christian must be a preacher. Ay, and that whether he will or not. He may impose silence upon his lips, but his life must be eloquent in spite of himself. And what a terrible thought is this, when we look on our poor, unworthy, miserable lives rendered unto the Lord, for all His benefits toward us! When the world sees us vacillating between right and wrong—questioning how near we may go to the edge of the precipice and yet be safe—can it realise that we believe that right and wrong to be a matter of life and death? Or when it hears us murmuring continually over trifling vexations, can it believe that we honestly think ourselves those to whom it is promised that all shall work for good—that all things are ours—that we are heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ?O Lord, pardon the iniquities of our holy things! Verily, without Thee we can do nothing.On the morning that this news reached Kilquyt, an old man in the garb of the Dominican Order was slowly mounting the ascent which led from the Vale of Sempringham. The valley was just waking into spring life. In the trees above his head the thrushes and chaffinches were singing; and just before him, diminished to a mere speck in the boundless blue, a lark poured forth his “flood of delirious music.” The Dominican paused and rested on his staff while he listened.“Sing, happy birds!” he said, when at length the lark’s song was over, and the bird had come down to earth again. “For you there are no vain regrets over yesterday, no woeful anticipations of to-morrow. But what kind of song canshesing when she hath heard the news I bring her?”“Father Guy!” said a voice beside him.It was a child of ten years old who stood in his path—a copy of Elaine four years before.“Ah, maid, art thou there?” answered Guy. “Run on, Annora, and say to the Grey Lady that I will be at her cell in less than an hour. Thy feet are swifter than mine.”Annora ran blithely forward. Guy of Ashridge pursued his weary road, for he was manifestly very weary. At length he rather suddenly halted, and sat down on a bank where primroses grew by the way-side.“I can go no further without resting,” said he. “Ten is one thing, and threescore and ten is another. If I could turn back and go no further!—Is the child here again already?”“Father Guy,” said Annora, running up and throwing herself down on the primrose bank, “I have been to the cell, but I have not given your message.”“Is the Lady not there?” asked Guy, a sudden feeling of relief coming over him.“Oh yes, she is there,” replied the child; “but she was kneeling at prayer, and I thought you would not have me disturb her.”“Right,” answered the monk. “But lest she should leave the cell ere I reach it, go back, Annora, and keep watch. Tell her, if she come forth, that I must speak with her to-day.”Once more away fled the light-footed Annora, and Guy, rising, resumed his journey.“If it must be, it may as well be now,” he said to himself, with a sigh.So, plodding and resting by turns, he at length arrived at the door of the cell. The door was closed, and the child sat on the step before it, singing softly to herself, and playing with a lapful of wild flowers—just as her sister had been doing when Philippa Sergeaux first made her acquaintance.“Is she come forth yet?” asked Guy.Annora shook her flaxen curls. Guy went to the little window, and glanced within. The grey figure was plainly visible, kneeling in prayer, with the head bent low, and resting against a ledge of the rock which formed the walls of the little dwelling. The monk sat down on a piece of rock outside the cell, and soon so completely lost himself in thought that Annora grew weary of her amusement before he spoke again. She did not, however, leave him; but when she had thrown away her flowers, and had spent some minutes in a vain search for a four-leaved clover, fairly tired out, she came and stood before him.“The shadow is nearly straight, Father Guy. Will she be much longer, do you think?”Guy started suddenly when Annora spoke.“There is something amiss,” he replied, in a tone of apprehension. “I never knew her so long before. Has she heard my news already?”He looked in again. The grey veiled figure had not changed its position. After a moment’s irresolution, Guy laid his hand upon the latch. The monk and the child entered together,—Guy with a face of resolute endurance, as though something which would cost him much pain must nevertheless be done; Annora with one of innocent wonder, not unmixed with awe.Guy took one step forward, and stopped suddenly.“O Father Guy!” said Annora in a whisper, “the Grey Lady is not praying,—she is asleep.”“Yes, she is asleep,” replied Guy in a constrained voice. “‘So He giveth His beloved sleep.’ He knew how terribly the news would pain her; and He would let none tell it to her but Himself. ‘I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of Heaven and earth!’”“But how strangely she sleeps!” cried Annora, still under her breath. “How white she is! and she looks so cold! Father Guy, won’t you awake her? She is not having nice dreams, I am afraid.”“The angels must awake her,” said Guy, solemnly. “Sweeter dreams than hers could no man have; for far above, in the Holy Land, she seeth the King’s face. Child, this is not sleep—it is death.”Ay, in the attitude of prayer, her head pillowed in its last sleep on that ledge of the rock, knelt all that was mortal of Isabel La Despenser. With her had been no priest to absolve—save the High Priest; no hand had smoothed her pathway to the grave but the Lord’s own hand, who had carried her so tenderly through the valley of the shadow of death. Painlessly the dark river was forded, silently the pearl-gates were thrown open; and now she stood within the veil, in the innermost sanctuary of the Temple of God. The arras of her life, wrought with such hard labour and bitter tears, was complete now. All the strange chequerings of the pattern were made plain, the fair proportions no longer hidden: the perfected work shone out in its finished beauty, and she grudged neither the labour nor the tears now.Guy of Ashridge could see this; but to Annora it was incomprehensible. She had been told by her mother that the Grey Lady had passed a life of much suffering before she came to Sempringham; for silent as she was concerning the details of that life, Isabel had never tried to conceal the fact that it had been one of suffering. And the child’s childish idea was the old notion of poetical justice—of the good being rewarded, and the evil punished, openly and unmistakably, in this world; a state of affairs frequently to be found in novels, but only now and then in reality. Had some splendid litter been borne to the door of the little cell, and had noblemen decked in velvet robes, shining with jewels, and riding on richly caparisoned horses, told her that they were come to make the Grey Lady a queen, Annora would have been fully satisfied. But here the heavenly chariot was invisible, and had come noiselessly; the white and glistering raiment of the angels had shone with no perceptible lustre, had swept by with no audible sound. The child wept bitterly.“What troubleth thee, Annora?” said Guy of Ashridge, laying his hand gently upon her head.“Oh!” sobbed Annora, “God hath given her nothing after all!”“Hath He given her nothing?” responded Guy. “I would thou couldst ask her, and see what she would answer.”“But I thought,” said the child, vainly endeavouring to stop crying, “I thought He had such beautiful things to give to people He loved. She used to say so. But He gave her nothing beautiful—only this cell and those grey garments. I thought He would have clad her in golden baudekyn (see Note 1), and set gems in her hair, and given her a horse to ride,—like the Lady de Chartreux had when she came to the Convent last year to visit her daughter, Sister Egidia. Her fingers were all sparkling with rings, and her gown had beautiful strings of pearl down the front, with perry-work (see Note 2) at the wrists. Why did not God give the Grey Lady such fair things as these? Was she not quite as good as the Lady de Chartreux?”“Because He loved her too well,” said Guy softly. “He had better and fairer things than such poor gauds for her. The Lady de Chartreux must die one day, and leave all her pearls and perry-work behind her. But to the Lady Isabel that here lieth dead, He gave length of days for ever and ever; He gave her to drink of the Living Water, after which she never thirsted any more.”“Oh, but I wish He would have given her something that I could see!” sobbed Annora again.“Little maid,” said Guy, his hand again falling lightly on the little flaxen head, “God grant that when thy few and evil days of this lower life be over, thou mayest both see and share what He hath given her!”And slowly he turned back to “her who lay so silent.”“Farewell, Isabel, Countess of Arundel!” he said almost tenderly. “For the corruptible coronet whereof man deprived thee, God hath given thee an incorruptible crown. For the golden baudekyn that was too mean to to clothe thee,—the robes that are washed white, the pure bright stone (see Note 3) whereof the angels’ robes are fashioned. For the stately barbs which were not worthy to bear thee,—a chariot and horses of fire. And for the delicate cates of royal tables, which were not sweet enough for thee,—the Bread of Life, which whosoever eateth shall never hunger, the Water of Life, which whosoever drinketh shall never thirst.“‘O retributio! stat brevis actio, vita perennis;O retributio! caelica mansio stat lue plenis.’”See Note 4 for a translation.“How blessed an exchange, how grand a reward! I trust God, but thou seest Him. I believe He hath done well, with thee, as with me, but thou knowest it.”“‘Jamais soyf n’aurasA l’éternité!’”Note 1. Baudekyn, the richest variety of this rich silk, in which threads of gold were probably intermingled.Note 2. Perry-work: goldsmiths’ work, often set with precious stones.Note 3. In Revelations xv. 6, the most ancient MSS., instead of “pure and white linen,” read “a pure bright stone.”Note 4:“‘O happy retribution!Short toil, eternal rest;For mortals and for sinnersA mansion with the blest!’”Neals’sTranslation.

“When the shore is won at last,Who will count the billows past?”Keble.

“When the shore is won at last,Who will count the billows past?”Keble.

It was winter again; and the winds blew harshly and wailingly around the Castle of Arundel. In the stateliest chamber of that Castle, where the hangings were of cramoisie paned with cloth of gold, the evening tapers were burning low, and a black-robed priest knelt beside the bed where an old man lay dying.

“I can think of nothing more, Father,” faintly whispered the penitent. “I have confessed every sin that I have ever sinned,so far as my memory serveth: and many men have been worse sinners than I. I never robbed a church in all my wars. I have bequeathed rents and lands to the Priory of God and Saint Pancras at Lewes, for two monks to celebrate day by day masses of our Lady and of the Holy Ghost,—two hundred pounds; and for matins and requiem masses in my chapel here, a thousand marks; and four hundred marks to purchase rent lands for the poor; and all my debts I have had a care to pay. Can I perform any other good work? Will that do, Father?”

“Thou canst do nought else, my son,” answered the priest. “Thou hast right nobly purchased the favour of God, and thine own salvation. Thy soul shall pass, white and pure, through the flames of Purgatory, to be triumphantly acquitted at the bar of God.”

And lifting his hands in blessing, he pronounced the unholy incantation,—“Absolvo te!”

“Thank the saints, and our dear Lady!” feebly responded the dying man. “I am clean and sinless.”

Before the morrow dawned on the Conversion of Saint Paul, that old man knew, as he had never known on earth, whether he stood clean and sinless before God or not. There were no bands in that death. The river did not look dark to him; it did not feel cold as his feet touched it. But on the other side what angels met him? and what entrance was accorded, to that sin-defiled and uncleansed soul, into that Land wherein there shall in no wise enter anything that defileth?

And so Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, passed away.

Two months later,—by a scribe’s letter, written in the name of her half-brother, the young, brave, joyous man upon whose head the old coronet had descended,—the news of the Earl’s death reached Philippa Sergeaux at Kilquyt. Very differently it affected her from the manner in which she would have received it four years before. And very differently from the manner in which it was received by the daughters of Alianora, to whom (though they did not put it into audible words) the real thought of the heart was—“Is the old man really gone at last? Well, it was time he should. Now I shall receive the coronet he left to me, and the two, or three, thousand marks.” For thus he had remembered Joan and Alesia; and thus they remembered him. To Mary he left nothing; a sure sign of offence, but how incurred history remains silent. But to the eldest daughter, whose name was equally unnamed with hers—whose ears heard the news so far away—whose head had never known the fall of his hand in blessing—whose cheek had never been touched by loving lips of his—to Philippa Sergeaux the black serge for which she exchanged her damask robes was real mourning.

She did not say now, “I can never forgive my father.” It is not when we are lying low in the dust before the feet of the Great King, oppressed with the intolerable burden of our ten thousand talents, that we feel disposed to rise and take our fellow-servant by the throat, with the pitiless, “Pay me that thou owest.” The offensive “Stand by,—I am holier than thou!” falls only from unholy lips. When the woman that was a sinner went out, washed and forgiven, from that sinless Presence, with the shards of the broken alabaster box in her hand, she was less likely than at any previous time in her life to reproach the fellow-sinners whom she met on her journey home. So, when Philippa Sergeaux’s eyes were opened, and she came to see how much God had forgiven her, the little that she had to forgive her father seemed less than nothing in comparison. She could distinguish now, as previously she could not—but as God does always—between the sin and the sinner; she was able to keep her hatred and loathing for the first, and to regard the second with the deepest pity. And when she thought of the sleep into which she could have little doubt that his soul had been lulled,—of the black awakening “on the brink of the pit,”—there was no room in her heart for any feeling but that of unutterable anguish.

They had not sent for her to Arundel. Until she heard that the end was reached, she never knew he was near the end at all.

It is not Christianity, but Pharisaism, which would shut up the kingdom of heaven against all but itself. To those who have tasted that the Lord is gracious, it is something more than mere privilege to summon him that is athirst to come. “Necessity is upon them—yea, woe is unto them if they preach not the gospel!” Though no Christian is a priest, every Christian must be a preacher. Ay, and that whether he will or not. He may impose silence upon his lips, but his life must be eloquent in spite of himself. And what a terrible thought is this, when we look on our poor, unworthy, miserable lives rendered unto the Lord, for all His benefits toward us! When the world sees us vacillating between right and wrong—questioning how near we may go to the edge of the precipice and yet be safe—can it realise that we believe that right and wrong to be a matter of life and death? Or when it hears us murmuring continually over trifling vexations, can it believe that we honestly think ourselves those to whom it is promised that all shall work for good—that all things are ours—that we are heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ?

O Lord, pardon the iniquities of our holy things! Verily, without Thee we can do nothing.

On the morning that this news reached Kilquyt, an old man in the garb of the Dominican Order was slowly mounting the ascent which led from the Vale of Sempringham. The valley was just waking into spring life. In the trees above his head the thrushes and chaffinches were singing; and just before him, diminished to a mere speck in the boundless blue, a lark poured forth his “flood of delirious music.” The Dominican paused and rested on his staff while he listened.

“Sing, happy birds!” he said, when at length the lark’s song was over, and the bird had come down to earth again. “For you there are no vain regrets over yesterday, no woeful anticipations of to-morrow. But what kind of song canshesing when she hath heard the news I bring her?”

“Father Guy!” said a voice beside him.

It was a child of ten years old who stood in his path—a copy of Elaine four years before.

“Ah, maid, art thou there?” answered Guy. “Run on, Annora, and say to the Grey Lady that I will be at her cell in less than an hour. Thy feet are swifter than mine.”

Annora ran blithely forward. Guy of Ashridge pursued his weary road, for he was manifestly very weary. At length he rather suddenly halted, and sat down on a bank where primroses grew by the way-side.

“I can go no further without resting,” said he. “Ten is one thing, and threescore and ten is another. If I could turn back and go no further!—Is the child here again already?”

“Father Guy,” said Annora, running up and throwing herself down on the primrose bank, “I have been to the cell, but I have not given your message.”

“Is the Lady not there?” asked Guy, a sudden feeling of relief coming over him.

“Oh yes, she is there,” replied the child; “but she was kneeling at prayer, and I thought you would not have me disturb her.”

“Right,” answered the monk. “But lest she should leave the cell ere I reach it, go back, Annora, and keep watch. Tell her, if she come forth, that I must speak with her to-day.”

Once more away fled the light-footed Annora, and Guy, rising, resumed his journey.

“If it must be, it may as well be now,” he said to himself, with a sigh.

So, plodding and resting by turns, he at length arrived at the door of the cell. The door was closed, and the child sat on the step before it, singing softly to herself, and playing with a lapful of wild flowers—just as her sister had been doing when Philippa Sergeaux first made her acquaintance.

“Is she come forth yet?” asked Guy.

Annora shook her flaxen curls. Guy went to the little window, and glanced within. The grey figure was plainly visible, kneeling in prayer, with the head bent low, and resting against a ledge of the rock which formed the walls of the little dwelling. The monk sat down on a piece of rock outside the cell, and soon so completely lost himself in thought that Annora grew weary of her amusement before he spoke again. She did not, however, leave him; but when she had thrown away her flowers, and had spent some minutes in a vain search for a four-leaved clover, fairly tired out, she came and stood before him.

“The shadow is nearly straight, Father Guy. Will she be much longer, do you think?”

Guy started suddenly when Annora spoke.

“There is something amiss,” he replied, in a tone of apprehension. “I never knew her so long before. Has she heard my news already?”

He looked in again. The grey veiled figure had not changed its position. After a moment’s irresolution, Guy laid his hand upon the latch. The monk and the child entered together,—Guy with a face of resolute endurance, as though something which would cost him much pain must nevertheless be done; Annora with one of innocent wonder, not unmixed with awe.

Guy took one step forward, and stopped suddenly.

“O Father Guy!” said Annora in a whisper, “the Grey Lady is not praying,—she is asleep.”

“Yes, she is asleep,” replied Guy in a constrained voice. “‘So He giveth His beloved sleep.’ He knew how terribly the news would pain her; and He would let none tell it to her but Himself. ‘I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of Heaven and earth!’”

“But how strangely she sleeps!” cried Annora, still under her breath. “How white she is! and she looks so cold! Father Guy, won’t you awake her? She is not having nice dreams, I am afraid.”

“The angels must awake her,” said Guy, solemnly. “Sweeter dreams than hers could no man have; for far above, in the Holy Land, she seeth the King’s face. Child, this is not sleep—it is death.”

Ay, in the attitude of prayer, her head pillowed in its last sleep on that ledge of the rock, knelt all that was mortal of Isabel La Despenser. With her had been no priest to absolve—save the High Priest; no hand had smoothed her pathway to the grave but the Lord’s own hand, who had carried her so tenderly through the valley of the shadow of death. Painlessly the dark river was forded, silently the pearl-gates were thrown open; and now she stood within the veil, in the innermost sanctuary of the Temple of God. The arras of her life, wrought with such hard labour and bitter tears, was complete now. All the strange chequerings of the pattern were made plain, the fair proportions no longer hidden: the perfected work shone out in its finished beauty, and she grudged neither the labour nor the tears now.

Guy of Ashridge could see this; but to Annora it was incomprehensible. She had been told by her mother that the Grey Lady had passed a life of much suffering before she came to Sempringham; for silent as she was concerning the details of that life, Isabel had never tried to conceal the fact that it had been one of suffering. And the child’s childish idea was the old notion of poetical justice—of the good being rewarded, and the evil punished, openly and unmistakably, in this world; a state of affairs frequently to be found in novels, but only now and then in reality. Had some splendid litter been borne to the door of the little cell, and had noblemen decked in velvet robes, shining with jewels, and riding on richly caparisoned horses, told her that they were come to make the Grey Lady a queen, Annora would have been fully satisfied. But here the heavenly chariot was invisible, and had come noiselessly; the white and glistering raiment of the angels had shone with no perceptible lustre, had swept by with no audible sound. The child wept bitterly.

“What troubleth thee, Annora?” said Guy of Ashridge, laying his hand gently upon her head.

“Oh!” sobbed Annora, “God hath given her nothing after all!”

“Hath He given her nothing?” responded Guy. “I would thou couldst ask her, and see what she would answer.”

“But I thought,” said the child, vainly endeavouring to stop crying, “I thought He had such beautiful things to give to people He loved. She used to say so. But He gave her nothing beautiful—only this cell and those grey garments. I thought He would have clad her in golden baudekyn (see Note 1), and set gems in her hair, and given her a horse to ride,—like the Lady de Chartreux had when she came to the Convent last year to visit her daughter, Sister Egidia. Her fingers were all sparkling with rings, and her gown had beautiful strings of pearl down the front, with perry-work (see Note 2) at the wrists. Why did not God give the Grey Lady such fair things as these? Was she not quite as good as the Lady de Chartreux?”

“Because He loved her too well,” said Guy softly. “He had better and fairer things than such poor gauds for her. The Lady de Chartreux must die one day, and leave all her pearls and perry-work behind her. But to the Lady Isabel that here lieth dead, He gave length of days for ever and ever; He gave her to drink of the Living Water, after which she never thirsted any more.”

“Oh, but I wish He would have given her something that I could see!” sobbed Annora again.

“Little maid,” said Guy, his hand again falling lightly on the little flaxen head, “God grant that when thy few and evil days of this lower life be over, thou mayest both see and share what He hath given her!”

And slowly he turned back to “her who lay so silent.”

“Farewell, Isabel, Countess of Arundel!” he said almost tenderly. “For the corruptible coronet whereof man deprived thee, God hath given thee an incorruptible crown. For the golden baudekyn that was too mean to to clothe thee,—the robes that are washed white, the pure bright stone (see Note 3) whereof the angels’ robes are fashioned. For the stately barbs which were not worthy to bear thee,—a chariot and horses of fire. And for the delicate cates of royal tables, which were not sweet enough for thee,—the Bread of Life, which whosoever eateth shall never hunger, the Water of Life, which whosoever drinketh shall never thirst.

“‘O retributio! stat brevis actio, vita perennis;O retributio! caelica mansio stat lue plenis.’”See Note 4 for a translation.

“‘O retributio! stat brevis actio, vita perennis;O retributio! caelica mansio stat lue plenis.’”See Note 4 for a translation.

“How blessed an exchange, how grand a reward! I trust God, but thou seest Him. I believe He hath done well, with thee, as with me, but thou knowest it.”

“‘Jamais soyf n’aurasA l’éternité!’”

“‘Jamais soyf n’aurasA l’éternité!’”

Note 1. Baudekyn, the richest variety of this rich silk, in which threads of gold were probably intermingled.

Note 2. Perry-work: goldsmiths’ work, often set with precious stones.

Note 3. In Revelations xv. 6, the most ancient MSS., instead of “pure and white linen,” read “a pure bright stone.”

Note 4:

“‘O happy retribution!Short toil, eternal rest;For mortals and for sinnersA mansion with the blest!’”Neals’sTranslation.

“‘O happy retribution!Short toil, eternal rest;For mortals and for sinnersA mansion with the blest!’”Neals’sTranslation.

Appendix.Some readers of this tale may desire to know on what historical foundation it rests, and in what points the fiction departs from truth.The Order of Predicant Friars was instituted by Dominic in 1215, with the avowed object of maintaining Roman doctrine and supremacy, and of opposing and superseding the wandering preachers sent out by the Waldensian Church into all parts of Europe, and known chiefly asBoni-Homines, orPoor Men of Lyons. But the Waldensian Church was acute enough to take advantage of this movement; and no sooner had the Order been founded than an army of “Gospellers” (as even thus early they were called), issued forth under its shelter. It appears probable that at an early period of their preaching, a very large percentage of the Predicant Friars were Gospellers. It is, moreover, an historical fact, that during the struggle between Edward the Second and his wretched Queen, the Predicant Friars ranged themselves on the side of the King, who had always been their friend, and whose own confessor, Luke de Wodeford, was of their Order. (Rot. Ex., Pasc, 2 Ed. III.) That the Despensers also patronised them is rather an inference founded upon fact, yet on such facts as very decidedly point to this conclusion. It should not be forgotten, that all accounts of the reign and character of Edward the Second which have come down to us were written by monks, or by persons educated in the opinions of the monks; and the Church of Rome has never, at any period of her history, hesitated to accuse of the vilest crimes any who endeavoured to escape from her toils into the pure light of the Gospel of Christ.That Hugh Le Despenser the Elder was an unprincipled and avaricious man, there can be little question. With him, if he embraced the principles of theBoni-Hominesat all, it was evidently a mere matter of intellectual opinion. Much less evidence can be found against his son, whose chief crime seems to have been that he aroused the hatred of the “she-wolf of France.” Joan La Despenser (the ladies of the family are always distinguished asLaDespenser in contemporary records) lived to a good age, for she was probably born about 1310, and she died in her nunnery of Shaftesbury, November 8, 1384 (I.P.M. 8 Ric. II., 14).Richard Earl of Arundel, surnamedCopped-Hat, the elder of the two sons of Earl Edmund and Alesia, heiress of Surrey, was born about 1308, and died January 24, 1376. (Arundel MS. 51, fol. 18.) His father was beheaded with Hugh Le Despenser the Elder, October 8 or 27, 1326; his mother died before May 23, 1338. (Froissart’s Chronicles, Book I., chapter xi.;Rot. Pat. 12 Ed. III., Part 2.) His first marriage was before February 2, 1321 (Ib. 14 Ed. II., Pt. 2); and his baby Countess was probably not more than three years old at that time. Her divorce immediately preceded the second marriage, and it was apparently just before June 24, 1345. On that day, “Isabel La Despenser, and Alianora daughter of Henry Earl of Lancaster,” are returned among the tenants of Richard Earl of Arundel (Ib., 19 Ed. III., Pt. 1): the designation showing that on that day neither was Countess of Arundel, but that the marriage-settlements of Alianora were already executed. After this date all trace of Isabel disappears, until we meet with the name of “Dame Isabel, daughter of Sir Hugh Spencer,” among the persons buried in the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey. (Harl. MS. 544, fol. 78.) The Countess Alianora, at the time of her marriage, was the widow of John Lord Beaumont, and the mother of two infant children; she had only just returned from a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint James of Compostella. (Rot. Pat. 18 Ed. III., Pt 1.) She died January 11, 1372 and was buried at Lewes. (Reg. Lewes, fol. 108.) Her second family consisted of three sons and three daughters—Richard, John, Thomas, Joan, Alesia, and Alianora. The last-named died in childhood; all the rest survived their parents.—Richard, a well-meaning and brave, but passionate and narrow-minded man, was governed by his stronger-minded brother Thomas, and under his evil influence entered upon a treasonable conspiracy, for which he paid the penalty on Tower Hill in the spring of 1397.—John is chiefly remarkable for having married the heiress of Maltravers, and becoming eventually the root of the family.—Thomas became Bishop of Ely and Archbishop of Canterbury—the persecuting Archbishop Arundel who will perhaps be remembered by the readers of “Mistress Margery”—and after suffering for his treasonable practices a richly-deserved banishment, was at once recalled and restored by his friend and fellow-conspirator, Henry the Fourth. He died in 1413. That the House of Arundel had no “Gospel” sympathies is shown by more evidences than one; though the Archbishop himself had at one time pretended friendship towards the Lollards. It did not last long; he would scarcely have been a true Arundel had it done so.—Joan Fitzalan was a woman of intense energy and terrible passions. She did not live happily with her husband, Humphrey Earl of Hereford, as appears from a curious and unique entry on the Patent Rolls (33 Ed. III., Pt. 3), providing that Humphrey should not divorce Joan on any pretence of precontract. The Earl, however, died at the early age of thirty-one, and Joan, whose two daughters were married to Princes (Alianora to Thomas Duke of Gloucester, Mary to Henry the Fourth), became a very powerful and wealthy widow. One anecdote will show what her character was better than volumes of description. She presided in person at the execution of John Duke of Exeter (brother of her sister Alesia’s husband), he being loyal to his half-brother, King Richard, while Joan was a vehement partisan of her son-in-law, Henry the Fourth. When no one came forward, in answer to her appeal, as the Duke’s executioner, Joan exclaimed, “Cursed be you villains! are none of you bold enough to kill a man?” A squire volunteered to officiate, but when he had seen and heard the man whom he was to slay, he shrank from the terrible task. “Madam,” was his remonstrance to the Countess, “for all the gold in the world, I cannot kill such a Lord!” “Thou shalt do what thou hast promised,” said Joan, “or I will cut thy head off.” And, probably knowing that she was likely to “do what she had promised,” the squire preferred the fall of the Duke’s head to his own. (Lystoire de la Traison et Mort du Roy Richart, pp. 98-9.) This strong-minded woman died April 7, 1419, and was buried at Walden, having previously been admitted a sister of the Grey Friars in her brother’s Cathedral of Canterbury. (I.P.M. 7 H.V., 59:—Arundel MS. 51, fol. 18:—ib. 68, fol. 51, b.) Of Alesia, Countess of Kent, little personal is known. She left no mark on her time, though the members of her numerous family were very prominent characters. She died March 17, 1416 (I.P.M. 4 H.V., 51).By all genealogists who have hitherto written on the Arundel family, two more daughters are ascribed to Earl Richard the Copped-Hat. These are Philippa Sergeaux, the heroine of the tale; and Mary L’Estrange. At the time when this story was written, I was misled to follow this supposition, though I had already seen that in that case, Isabel, and not Alianora, must have been the mother of Philippa. Some months after the story was first published, I began to suspect that this was also the case with regard to Mary L’Estrange. But I was not prepared for the discovery, made only last May, that Philippa Sergeaux was not the daughter of Earl Richard at all! In two charters recorded on a Close Roll for 20 Ric. II., she distinctly styles herself “daughter of Sir Edmund of Arundel, Knight,” This was a younger brother of Earl Richard; and his wife was Sybil Montacute, a daughter of the Lollard House of Salisbury. It is probable, though no certainty has yet been found, that Mary L’Estrange was also a daughter of Sir Edmund, since dates conclusively show that she cannot have been the daughter of Alianora of Lancaster. She died August 29, 1396, leaving an only child, Ankaretta Talbot. (I.P.M. 20 R. II., 48).As early, therefore, as I have the opportunity of doing it, I make theamende honorableto my readers for having unwittingly misled them on this point. It is scarcely a discredit not to have known a fact which was known to none. The tale must therefore be regarded as pure fiction, so far as Philippa is concerned; for Isabel La Despenser apparently had no child. The facts remain the same as regards other persons, where their history is not affected by the discovery.Philippa Sergeaux is represented in the opening of the story as a child of three years old. It is more than probable that she was about ten years younger. The date of her marriage is not on record. She was eventually the mother of five children, though all were born subsequent to the period at which my story closes. They were—Richard, born December 21, 1376, and died issueless, June 24, 1396; Elizabeth, born 1379, wife of Sir William Marny; Philippa, born 1381, wife of Robert Passele; Alice, born at Kilquyt, September 1, 1384, wife of Guy de Saint Albino; Joan, born 1393, died February 21, 1400. Philippa became a widow, September 30, 1393, and died September 13, 1399. (I.P.M., 17 Ric. II., 53; 21 Ric. II., 50; 1 H. IV., 14, 23, 24.)Some of the Christian names may strike the reader as having a very modern sound. I may therefore note that not one name occurs in the story which is not authenticated by its appearance in the state papers of the time.It only remains to be added, that the fictitious characters of the tale are Giles de Edingdon and Guy of Ashridge, the nurse Alina, Agnes the lavender, the nuns Laura and Senicula, and the woodcutter’s children Elaine and Annora. The details given of Earl Richard’s will are true; but the presence of the Earl and Sir Richard Sergeaux in the train of John of Gaunt in Guienne, has been assumed for the purposes of the story.

Some readers of this tale may desire to know on what historical foundation it rests, and in what points the fiction departs from truth.

The Order of Predicant Friars was instituted by Dominic in 1215, with the avowed object of maintaining Roman doctrine and supremacy, and of opposing and superseding the wandering preachers sent out by the Waldensian Church into all parts of Europe, and known chiefly asBoni-Homines, orPoor Men of Lyons. But the Waldensian Church was acute enough to take advantage of this movement; and no sooner had the Order been founded than an army of “Gospellers” (as even thus early they were called), issued forth under its shelter. It appears probable that at an early period of their preaching, a very large percentage of the Predicant Friars were Gospellers. It is, moreover, an historical fact, that during the struggle between Edward the Second and his wretched Queen, the Predicant Friars ranged themselves on the side of the King, who had always been their friend, and whose own confessor, Luke de Wodeford, was of their Order. (Rot. Ex., Pasc, 2 Ed. III.) That the Despensers also patronised them is rather an inference founded upon fact, yet on such facts as very decidedly point to this conclusion. It should not be forgotten, that all accounts of the reign and character of Edward the Second which have come down to us were written by monks, or by persons educated in the opinions of the monks; and the Church of Rome has never, at any period of her history, hesitated to accuse of the vilest crimes any who endeavoured to escape from her toils into the pure light of the Gospel of Christ.

That Hugh Le Despenser the Elder was an unprincipled and avaricious man, there can be little question. With him, if he embraced the principles of theBoni-Hominesat all, it was evidently a mere matter of intellectual opinion. Much less evidence can be found against his son, whose chief crime seems to have been that he aroused the hatred of the “she-wolf of France.” Joan La Despenser (the ladies of the family are always distinguished asLaDespenser in contemporary records) lived to a good age, for she was probably born about 1310, and she died in her nunnery of Shaftesbury, November 8, 1384 (I.P.M. 8 Ric. II., 14).

Richard Earl of Arundel, surnamedCopped-Hat, the elder of the two sons of Earl Edmund and Alesia, heiress of Surrey, was born about 1308, and died January 24, 1376. (Arundel MS. 51, fol. 18.) His father was beheaded with Hugh Le Despenser the Elder, October 8 or 27, 1326; his mother died before May 23, 1338. (Froissart’s Chronicles, Book I., chapter xi.;Rot. Pat. 12 Ed. III., Part 2.) His first marriage was before February 2, 1321 (Ib. 14 Ed. II., Pt. 2); and his baby Countess was probably not more than three years old at that time. Her divorce immediately preceded the second marriage, and it was apparently just before June 24, 1345. On that day, “Isabel La Despenser, and Alianora daughter of Henry Earl of Lancaster,” are returned among the tenants of Richard Earl of Arundel (Ib., 19 Ed. III., Pt. 1): the designation showing that on that day neither was Countess of Arundel, but that the marriage-settlements of Alianora were already executed. After this date all trace of Isabel disappears, until we meet with the name of “Dame Isabel, daughter of Sir Hugh Spencer,” among the persons buried in the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey. (Harl. MS. 544, fol. 78.) The Countess Alianora, at the time of her marriage, was the widow of John Lord Beaumont, and the mother of two infant children; she had only just returned from a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint James of Compostella. (Rot. Pat. 18 Ed. III., Pt 1.) She died January 11, 1372 and was buried at Lewes. (Reg. Lewes, fol. 108.) Her second family consisted of three sons and three daughters—Richard, John, Thomas, Joan, Alesia, and Alianora. The last-named died in childhood; all the rest survived their parents.—Richard, a well-meaning and brave, but passionate and narrow-minded man, was governed by his stronger-minded brother Thomas, and under his evil influence entered upon a treasonable conspiracy, for which he paid the penalty on Tower Hill in the spring of 1397.—John is chiefly remarkable for having married the heiress of Maltravers, and becoming eventually the root of the family.—Thomas became Bishop of Ely and Archbishop of Canterbury—the persecuting Archbishop Arundel who will perhaps be remembered by the readers of “Mistress Margery”—and after suffering for his treasonable practices a richly-deserved banishment, was at once recalled and restored by his friend and fellow-conspirator, Henry the Fourth. He died in 1413. That the House of Arundel had no “Gospel” sympathies is shown by more evidences than one; though the Archbishop himself had at one time pretended friendship towards the Lollards. It did not last long; he would scarcely have been a true Arundel had it done so.—Joan Fitzalan was a woman of intense energy and terrible passions. She did not live happily with her husband, Humphrey Earl of Hereford, as appears from a curious and unique entry on the Patent Rolls (33 Ed. III., Pt. 3), providing that Humphrey should not divorce Joan on any pretence of precontract. The Earl, however, died at the early age of thirty-one, and Joan, whose two daughters were married to Princes (Alianora to Thomas Duke of Gloucester, Mary to Henry the Fourth), became a very powerful and wealthy widow. One anecdote will show what her character was better than volumes of description. She presided in person at the execution of John Duke of Exeter (brother of her sister Alesia’s husband), he being loyal to his half-brother, King Richard, while Joan was a vehement partisan of her son-in-law, Henry the Fourth. When no one came forward, in answer to her appeal, as the Duke’s executioner, Joan exclaimed, “Cursed be you villains! are none of you bold enough to kill a man?” A squire volunteered to officiate, but when he had seen and heard the man whom he was to slay, he shrank from the terrible task. “Madam,” was his remonstrance to the Countess, “for all the gold in the world, I cannot kill such a Lord!” “Thou shalt do what thou hast promised,” said Joan, “or I will cut thy head off.” And, probably knowing that she was likely to “do what she had promised,” the squire preferred the fall of the Duke’s head to his own. (Lystoire de la Traison et Mort du Roy Richart, pp. 98-9.) This strong-minded woman died April 7, 1419, and was buried at Walden, having previously been admitted a sister of the Grey Friars in her brother’s Cathedral of Canterbury. (I.P.M. 7 H.V., 59:—Arundel MS. 51, fol. 18:—ib. 68, fol. 51, b.) Of Alesia, Countess of Kent, little personal is known. She left no mark on her time, though the members of her numerous family were very prominent characters. She died March 17, 1416 (I.P.M. 4 H.V., 51).

By all genealogists who have hitherto written on the Arundel family, two more daughters are ascribed to Earl Richard the Copped-Hat. These are Philippa Sergeaux, the heroine of the tale; and Mary L’Estrange. At the time when this story was written, I was misled to follow this supposition, though I had already seen that in that case, Isabel, and not Alianora, must have been the mother of Philippa. Some months after the story was first published, I began to suspect that this was also the case with regard to Mary L’Estrange. But I was not prepared for the discovery, made only last May, that Philippa Sergeaux was not the daughter of Earl Richard at all! In two charters recorded on a Close Roll for 20 Ric. II., she distinctly styles herself “daughter of Sir Edmund of Arundel, Knight,” This was a younger brother of Earl Richard; and his wife was Sybil Montacute, a daughter of the Lollard House of Salisbury. It is probable, though no certainty has yet been found, that Mary L’Estrange was also a daughter of Sir Edmund, since dates conclusively show that she cannot have been the daughter of Alianora of Lancaster. She died August 29, 1396, leaving an only child, Ankaretta Talbot. (I.P.M. 20 R. II., 48).

As early, therefore, as I have the opportunity of doing it, I make theamende honorableto my readers for having unwittingly misled them on this point. It is scarcely a discredit not to have known a fact which was known to none. The tale must therefore be regarded as pure fiction, so far as Philippa is concerned; for Isabel La Despenser apparently had no child. The facts remain the same as regards other persons, where their history is not affected by the discovery.

Philippa Sergeaux is represented in the opening of the story as a child of three years old. It is more than probable that she was about ten years younger. The date of her marriage is not on record. She was eventually the mother of five children, though all were born subsequent to the period at which my story closes. They were—Richard, born December 21, 1376, and died issueless, June 24, 1396; Elizabeth, born 1379, wife of Sir William Marny; Philippa, born 1381, wife of Robert Passele; Alice, born at Kilquyt, September 1, 1384, wife of Guy de Saint Albino; Joan, born 1393, died February 21, 1400. Philippa became a widow, September 30, 1393, and died September 13, 1399. (I.P.M., 17 Ric. II., 53; 21 Ric. II., 50; 1 H. IV., 14, 23, 24.)

Some of the Christian names may strike the reader as having a very modern sound. I may therefore note that not one name occurs in the story which is not authenticated by its appearance in the state papers of the time.

It only remains to be added, that the fictitious characters of the tale are Giles de Edingdon and Guy of Ashridge, the nurse Alina, Agnes the lavender, the nuns Laura and Senicula, and the woodcutter’s children Elaine and Annora. The details given of Earl Richard’s will are true; but the presence of the Earl and Sir Richard Sergeaux in the train of John of Gaunt in Guienne, has been assumed for the purposes of the story.

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