Chapter Five.

Chapter Five.The story of Isabel.“O dumb, dumb lips! O crushed, crushed heart!O grief, past pride, past shame!”Miss Muloch.Mother Joan had arrived at the point closing the last chapter, when the sharp ringing of the Abbess’ little bell announced the end of the recreation-time; and convent laws being quite as rigid as those of the Medes and Persians, Philippa was obliged to defer the further gratification of her curiosity. When the next recreation-time came, the blind nun resumed her narrative.“When Dame Isabelle was lodged at her ease, for she saw first to that, she ordered her prisoners to be brought before the Prince her son. She had the decency not to sit as judge herself; but, in outrage of all womanliness, she sat herself in the court, near the Prince’s seat. She would have sat in the seat rather than have missed her end. The Prince was wholly governed by his mother; he knew not her true character; and he was but a lad of fourteen years. So, when the prisoners were brought forth, the tigress rose up in her place, and spake openly to the assembled barons (a shameful thing for a woman to do!) that she and her son would see that law and justice were rendered to them, according to their deeds. She! That was the barons’ place, not hers. She should have kept to her distaff.“Then said my grandfather, bowing his white head, ‘Ah, Dame! God grant us an upright judge, and a just sentence; and that if we cannot have it in this world, we may find it in another.’“The charges laid against them were then read by the Marshal; and the barons gave sentence—of course as Dame Isabelle wished. The Lord of Arundel and Surrey, the premier Earl of England, (see Note 1), and the aged white-haired Earl of Winchester, (see Note 2), were doomed to the death of traitors.“Saint Denis’ Day—child, it gives me a shudder to name it! We were within the castle, and they set up the gibbet before our eyes. Before the eyes of the son of the one man, the wife and son of the other! I remember catching up Isabel, and running with her into an inner chamber—any whither to be out of sight of that awful thing. I remember, too, that the Lady of Arundel, having seen all she could bear, fainted away on the rushes, and I laid her gently down, and nursed her back into life. But when she came to herself, she cried—‘Is it all over? O cruel Joan, to have made me live! I might have died with my lord.’ At last it was all over: over—for that time. And God had taken no notice. He had not opened the heavens and thundered down His great ire. I suppose that must have been on account of some high festival they had in Heaven in honour of Saint Denis, and God was too busy, listening to the angels, to have any time for us.“But that night, ere the dawn, my father softly entered the chamber where we maidens slept. He had been closeted half the night with the King, taking counsel how to escape the cruel jaws of the tigress; and now he roused us, and bade us farewell. He and the King would set forth in a little boat, and endeavour to reach Wales. They thought us, however, safer in the castle. We watched them embark in the grey dawn, ere men were well astir; and they rowed off toward Wales. Would God they had stayed where they were!—but God had not ended the festival of Saint Denis.“Twelve days that little boat rode the silver Severn; beaten back, beaten back at every tide, the waves rough, and the wind contrary. And at length Sir Henry Beaumont, the devil whispering to him who were in the boat, set forth in pursuit. (See Note 3.)“We saw them taken. The Monday after Saint Luke, Edward of Caernarvon, sometime King of England, and Hugh Le Despenser, sometime Earl of Gloucester, were led captives into Bristol, and delivered to the tigress. But we were not to see them die. Perhaps Saint Luke had interceded for us, as it was in his octave. The King was sent to Berkeley Castle. My father they set on the smallest and poorest horse they could find in the army, clad in an emblazoned surcoat such as he was used to wear. From the moment that he was taken, he would touch no food. And when they reached Hereford, he was so weak and ill, that Dame Isabelle began to fear he would escape her hands by a more merciful death than she designed for him. So she stayed her course at Hereford for the Feast of All Saints, and the morrow after she had him brought forth for trial. They had need to bear him into her presence, he was so nearly insensible. Finding that they could not wake him into life by speaking to him and calling him, they twined a crown of nettles and set it on his head. But he was even then too near death to rouse himself. So, lest he should die on the spot, they hurried him forth to execution. He died the death of a traitor; but maybe God was more merciful than they, and snatched his soul away ere he had suffered all they meant he should. I suppose He allowed him to suffer previously, in punishment for his allying himself with the wicked men of Edingdon: but I trust his suffering purified his soul, and that God received him.“Her vengeance thus satiated, Dame Isabelle set out for London. The Castle of Arundel was forfeited, and the Lady and her son Richard were left homeless. (See Note 4.) We set forth with them, a journey of many weary days, to join my mother. But when we reached London, we found all changed. Dame Isabelle, on her first coming, had summoned my mother to surrender the Tower; and she, being affrighted, had resigned her charge, and was committed to the custody of the Lord de la Zouche. So we homeless ones bent our steps to Sempringham, where were two of my father’s sisters, Joan and Alianora; and we prayed the holy nuns there to grant us shelter in their abode of peace. The Lord of Hereford gave an asylum for young Richard.“Those were peaceful, quiet days we passed at Sempringham; and they were the last Isabel was to know. Meanwhile, the Friars Predicants, and in especial the men of Edingdon and Ashridge, were spreading themselves throughout the land, working well to bring back the King. Working too well; for Dame Isabelle took alarm, and on Saint Maurice’s Day, twelve months after her landing, the King died at Berkeley Castle. God knew how: and I think she knew who had sat by his side on the throne, and who was the mother of his children. We only heard at Sempringham, that on that night shrieks of agony rang through the vale of the Severn, and men woke throughout the valley, and whispered a requiem for the hapless soul which was departing in such horrible torment.“But that opened the eyes of the young King (for the Prince of Wales had been made King; ay, and all the hour of his crowning, Dame Isabelle stood by, and made believe to weep for her lord): he began to see what a serpent was his mother; and I daresay Brother John de Gaytenby, the Friar Predicant who was his confessor, let not the matter sleep. And no sooner did Edward of Windsor gain his full power, than he shut up the wicked Jezebel his mother in the Castle of Rising. She lived there twenty years: she died there, fourteen years ago.“So the tide turned. The friends of Dame Isabelle died on the scaffold, four years later, even ashehad died; and we heard it at Sempringham, and knew that God and the saints and angels had taken up our cause at last. Child, God’s mill grindeth slowly, but it grindeth very small.“Ere this, Hugh, my brother, had been granted his life by the King, but not our father’s earldom (see Note 5); and when my father had been dead only two years, leaving such awful memories—our mother wedded again. Ah, well! she was our mother. But, child, I have seen a caterpillar, shaken rudely from the fragrant petals of a rose, crawl to the next weed that grew. She was fair and well-dowered; and against the King’s will, she wedded the Lord de la Zouche, in whose custody she was.“And now for the end of my woeful tale, which is the story of Isabel herself. For, one year later, the Castle of Arundel was given back to Richard Fitzalan; and two years thereafter the Lady of Arundel died. Listen a little longer with patience: for the saddest part of the story is that yet to come.“When Richard and Isabel went back to the Castle of Arundel, I was a young novice, just admitted. And considering the second marriage of our mother, and the death of the Lady of Arundel, and the extreme youth of Isabel (who was not yet fourteen), I was permitted to reside very much with her. A woeful residence it was; for now began the fourteen terrible years of my darling’s passion.“For no sooner was his mother’s gentle hand removed, than, even on the very day of her burial, Earl Richard threw off the mask.“Before that time, I had wonderingly doubted if he loved her. I knew then that he hated her. And I found one other thing, sadder yet—that she loved him. I confess unto thee, by the blessed ankle-bones of Saint Denis, that I never could make out why. I never saw in him anything to love; and had I so done, methinks he had soon had that folly out of me. At first I scarcely understood all. I used to see livid blue bruises on her neck and arms, and ask her wherefore they were there; and she would only flush faintly, and say,—‘It is nothing—I struck myself against something.’ I never knew for months against what she struck. But she never complained—not even to me. She was patient as an angel of God.“Now and then I used to notice that there came to the castle an aged man, in the garb of the Friars Predicants; unto whom—and to him only—Isabel used to confess. So changed was he from his old self, that I never knew till long after that this was our father’s old confessor, Giles de Edingdon. She only said to me that he taught her good things. If he taught her her saintly endurance, it was good. But I fear he taught her other things as well: to hold in light esteem that blessed doctrine of grace of condignity, whereby man can and doth merit the favour of God. And what he gave her instead thereof I know not. She used to tell me, but I forget now. Only once, in an awful hour, she said unto me, that but for the knowledge he had given her, she could not have borne her life.“What was that hour?—Ah! it was the hour, when for the first time he threw aside all care, even before me, and struck her senseless on the rushes at my feet. And I never forgave him. She forgave him, poor innocent!—nay, rather, I think she loved him too well to think of forgiveness. I never saw love like hers; it would have borne death itself, and have kissed the murderer’s hand in dying. Some women do love so. I never did, nor could.“But when this awful hour came, and she fell at my feet, as if dead, by a blow from his hand in anger,—the spirit of my fathers came upon me, and like a prophetess of woe, child, I stood forth and cursed him! I think God spake by me, for words seemed to come from me without my will; and I said that for two generations the heir of his house should die by violence in the flower of his age (See Note 6). Thou mayest see if it be so; but I never shall.“And what said he?—He said, bowing his head low,—‘Sister Joan La Despenser is a great flatterer. Pray, accept my thanks. Henceforward, she may perhaps find the calm glades of Shaftesbury more pleasant than the bowers of Arundel. At least, I venture to beg that she will make the trial.’ And he went forth, calling to his hounds.“Ay, went forth, without another word, and left her lying there at my feet—her, to save whom one pang of pain I would have laid down my life. And the portcullis was shut upon me. I was powerless to save her from that man: I was to see her again no more. I did see her again no more for ever. I waited till her sense came back, when she said she was not hurt, and fell to excusing him. I felt as though I could have torn him limb from limb. But that would have pained her.“And then, when she was restored, I went forth from the Castle of Arundel. I had been dismissed by the master; and dearly as I loved her, I was too proud to be dismissed twice. So we took our farewell. Her soft cheek pressed to mine—for the last time; her dear eyes looking into mine—for the last time; her sweet, low voice blessing me—for the last time.“And what were her last words, saidst thou? I cannot repeat them tearlessly, even now.“‘God grant thee the Living Water.’“Those were they. She had spoken to me oft—though I had not much cared to listen, except to her sweet voice—of something whereof this Giles had told her; some kind of fairy tale, regarding this life as a desert, and of some Well of pure, fresh water, deep down therein. I know not what. I cared for all that came from her, but I cared nought for what came only through her from Giles de Edingdon. But she said God had given her a draught of that Living Water, and she was at rest. I know nothing about it. But I am glad if anything gave her rest from that anguish—even a fairy tale.“Well, after that I saw her no more again. But now and then, when mine hunger for her could no longer be appeased, I used to come to the Convent of Arundel, and send word to Alina, thy nurse, to come to me thither. And so, from time to time, I had word of her.“The years passed on, and with them he grew harder and harder. He had hated her, first, I think, from the fancy that my father had been after some manner the cause of his father’s violent end; and after that he hated her for herself. And as time passed, and she had no child, he hated her worse than ever. But at last, after many years, God gave her one—thyself. I thought, perchance, if anything would soften him, thy smiles and babyish ways might do it. But—soften him! It had been easier to soften a rock of stone. When he knew that it was only a girl that was born, he hated her worse than ever. Three years more; then the last blow fell. Earl Henry of Lancaster bade him to his castle. As they talked, quoth the Earl,—‘I would you had not been a wedded man, my Lord of Arundel; I had gladly given you one of my daughters.’—‘Pure foy!’ quoth he, ‘but that need be no hindrance, nor shall long.’ Nor was it. He sent to our holy Father the Pope—with some lie, I trow—and received a divorce, and a dispensation to wed Alianora, his cousin, the young widow of the Lord de Beaumont, son of that Sir Henry that captured the King and my father. All the while he told Isabel nothing. The meanest of her scullions knew of the coming woe before she knew it. The night ere Earl Richard should be re-wedded, he thought proper to dismiss his discarded wife.“‘Dame,’ said he to her, as he rose from the supper-table, ‘I pray you, give good ear for a moment to what my chaplain is about to read.’“He was always cruelly courteous before men.“She stayed and listened. Then she grew faint and white—then she grasped the seat to support her—then she lost hold and sense, and fell down as if dead before him. Poor, miserably-crushed heart! She loved this monster so well!“He waited till she came to herself. Then he gave the last stroke.“‘I depart now,’ said he, ‘to fetch home my bride. May I beg that the Lady Isabel La Despenser will quit the castle before she comes. It would be very unpleasant to her otherwise.’“Unpleasant—to Alianora! And to Isabel, what would it be? Little he recked of that. She had received her dismissal. He had said to her, in effect,—‘You are my wife, and Lady of Arundel, no more.’“She lifted herself up a little, and looked into his face. She knew she was looking upon him for the last time. And once more the fervent, unvalued, long-outraged love broke forth,—once more, for the last time.“‘My lord! my lord!’ she wailed. ‘Leave me not so, Richard! Give me one kiss for farewell!’“He did not lift her from the ground; he did not kiss her; but he was not quite silent to that last bitter cry. He held forth his hand—the hand which had been uplifted to strike her so often. She clasped it in hers, and kissed it many times. And that was his farewell.“When he had drawn his hand from her, and was gone forth, she sat a season like a statue, listening. She hearkened till she heard him ride away—on his way to Alianora. Then, as if some prop that had held her up were suddenly withdrawn, she fell forward, and lay with her face to the rushes. All that awful night she lay there. Alina came to her, and strove to lift her, to give her food, to yield her comfort: but she took no heed of anything. When the dawn came, she arose, and wrapped herself in her mantle. She took no money, no jewels—not an ouche nor a grain of gold. Only she wrapped in silk two locks of hair—his and thine. I should have left the first behind. Then, when she was seated on the horse to depart, the page told her who mounted afore, that his Lord had given him command to take her to a certain place, which was not to be told beforehand.“Alina said she shivered a little at this; but she only answered, ‘Do my lord’s will.’ Then she asked for thee. Alina lifted thee up to her, and she clasped thee close underneath her veil, and kissed thee tenderly. And that was thy last mother’s kiss.”“Then that is what I remember!” broke in Philippa suddenly.“It is impossible, child!” answered Joan. “Thou wert but a babe of three years old.”“But I do—I am sure I do!” she repeated.“Have thy way,” said Joan. “If thou so thinkest, I will not gainsay thee. Well, she gave thee back in a few minutes; and then she rode away—never pausing to look back—no man knew whither.”“But what became of her?”“God wotteth. Sometimes I hope he murdered her. One sin more or less would matter little to the black list of sins on his guilty soul; and the little pain of dying by violence would have saved Isabel the greater pain of living through the desolate woe of the future. But I never knew, as I told thee. Nor shall I ever know, till that last day come when the Great Doom shall be, and he and she shall stand together before the bar of God. There shall be an end to her torment then. It is something to think that there shall be no end to his.”So, in a tone of bitter, passionate vindictiveness, Joan La Despenser closed her story.Philippa sat silent, wondering many things. If Guy of Ashridge knew any thing of this, if Giles de Edingdon were yet living, if Agnes the lavender had ever found out what became of her revered mistress. And when she knelt down to tell her beads that night, a very strange and terrible prayer lingered on her lips the last and most earnestly of all. It was, that she might never again see her father’s face. She felt that had she done so, the spirit of the prophetess might have seized upon her as upon Joan; that, terrified as she had always been of him, she should now have stood up before him and have cursed him to his face.Note 1. Edmund Fitzalan was premier Earl as Earl of Surrey, which title he acquired by his marriage with Alesia, sister and heir of John de Warrenne, last Earl of Surrey of the original male line.Note 2. Probably owing to the great mortality among the nobles caused by the French war, a man who survived fifty was regarded as very old in the reign of Edward the Third.Note 3. This is Froissart’s account of the events, and his dates have been mainly followed. Many writers give a varying narrative, stating that the King and Earl did reach Wales, and were taken there in a wood. Their dates are also about a month later. The inquisitions of the Despensers, as is usual in the case of attainted persons, do not give the date of death.Note 4. The castle was granted to Edmund Earl of Kent, brother of Edward the Second; and there, on his attainder and execution, four years later, his widow and children were arrested.Note 5. The earldom did not return to the Despenser family until 1397, when it was conferred on the great-grandson of the attainted Earl.Note 6. Earl Richard, his son, was beheaded in London, in the spring of 1397; Earl Thomas, his grandson, fell at Agincourt, October 13, 1415.

“O dumb, dumb lips! O crushed, crushed heart!O grief, past pride, past shame!”Miss Muloch.

“O dumb, dumb lips! O crushed, crushed heart!O grief, past pride, past shame!”Miss Muloch.

Mother Joan had arrived at the point closing the last chapter, when the sharp ringing of the Abbess’ little bell announced the end of the recreation-time; and convent laws being quite as rigid as those of the Medes and Persians, Philippa was obliged to defer the further gratification of her curiosity. When the next recreation-time came, the blind nun resumed her narrative.

“When Dame Isabelle was lodged at her ease, for she saw first to that, she ordered her prisoners to be brought before the Prince her son. She had the decency not to sit as judge herself; but, in outrage of all womanliness, she sat herself in the court, near the Prince’s seat. She would have sat in the seat rather than have missed her end. The Prince was wholly governed by his mother; he knew not her true character; and he was but a lad of fourteen years. So, when the prisoners were brought forth, the tigress rose up in her place, and spake openly to the assembled barons (a shameful thing for a woman to do!) that she and her son would see that law and justice were rendered to them, according to their deeds. She! That was the barons’ place, not hers. She should have kept to her distaff.

“Then said my grandfather, bowing his white head, ‘Ah, Dame! God grant us an upright judge, and a just sentence; and that if we cannot have it in this world, we may find it in another.’

“The charges laid against them were then read by the Marshal; and the barons gave sentence—of course as Dame Isabelle wished. The Lord of Arundel and Surrey, the premier Earl of England, (see Note 1), and the aged white-haired Earl of Winchester, (see Note 2), were doomed to the death of traitors.

“Saint Denis’ Day—child, it gives me a shudder to name it! We were within the castle, and they set up the gibbet before our eyes. Before the eyes of the son of the one man, the wife and son of the other! I remember catching up Isabel, and running with her into an inner chamber—any whither to be out of sight of that awful thing. I remember, too, that the Lady of Arundel, having seen all she could bear, fainted away on the rushes, and I laid her gently down, and nursed her back into life. But when she came to herself, she cried—‘Is it all over? O cruel Joan, to have made me live! I might have died with my lord.’ At last it was all over: over—for that time. And God had taken no notice. He had not opened the heavens and thundered down His great ire. I suppose that must have been on account of some high festival they had in Heaven in honour of Saint Denis, and God was too busy, listening to the angels, to have any time for us.

“But that night, ere the dawn, my father softly entered the chamber where we maidens slept. He had been closeted half the night with the King, taking counsel how to escape the cruel jaws of the tigress; and now he roused us, and bade us farewell. He and the King would set forth in a little boat, and endeavour to reach Wales. They thought us, however, safer in the castle. We watched them embark in the grey dawn, ere men were well astir; and they rowed off toward Wales. Would God they had stayed where they were!—but God had not ended the festival of Saint Denis.

“Twelve days that little boat rode the silver Severn; beaten back, beaten back at every tide, the waves rough, and the wind contrary. And at length Sir Henry Beaumont, the devil whispering to him who were in the boat, set forth in pursuit. (See Note 3.)

“We saw them taken. The Monday after Saint Luke, Edward of Caernarvon, sometime King of England, and Hugh Le Despenser, sometime Earl of Gloucester, were led captives into Bristol, and delivered to the tigress. But we were not to see them die. Perhaps Saint Luke had interceded for us, as it was in his octave. The King was sent to Berkeley Castle. My father they set on the smallest and poorest horse they could find in the army, clad in an emblazoned surcoat such as he was used to wear. From the moment that he was taken, he would touch no food. And when they reached Hereford, he was so weak and ill, that Dame Isabelle began to fear he would escape her hands by a more merciful death than she designed for him. So she stayed her course at Hereford for the Feast of All Saints, and the morrow after she had him brought forth for trial. They had need to bear him into her presence, he was so nearly insensible. Finding that they could not wake him into life by speaking to him and calling him, they twined a crown of nettles and set it on his head. But he was even then too near death to rouse himself. So, lest he should die on the spot, they hurried him forth to execution. He died the death of a traitor; but maybe God was more merciful than they, and snatched his soul away ere he had suffered all they meant he should. I suppose He allowed him to suffer previously, in punishment for his allying himself with the wicked men of Edingdon: but I trust his suffering purified his soul, and that God received him.

“Her vengeance thus satiated, Dame Isabelle set out for London. The Castle of Arundel was forfeited, and the Lady and her son Richard were left homeless. (See Note 4.) We set forth with them, a journey of many weary days, to join my mother. But when we reached London, we found all changed. Dame Isabelle, on her first coming, had summoned my mother to surrender the Tower; and she, being affrighted, had resigned her charge, and was committed to the custody of the Lord de la Zouche. So we homeless ones bent our steps to Sempringham, where were two of my father’s sisters, Joan and Alianora; and we prayed the holy nuns there to grant us shelter in their abode of peace. The Lord of Hereford gave an asylum for young Richard.

“Those were peaceful, quiet days we passed at Sempringham; and they were the last Isabel was to know. Meanwhile, the Friars Predicants, and in especial the men of Edingdon and Ashridge, were spreading themselves throughout the land, working well to bring back the King. Working too well; for Dame Isabelle took alarm, and on Saint Maurice’s Day, twelve months after her landing, the King died at Berkeley Castle. God knew how: and I think she knew who had sat by his side on the throne, and who was the mother of his children. We only heard at Sempringham, that on that night shrieks of agony rang through the vale of the Severn, and men woke throughout the valley, and whispered a requiem for the hapless soul which was departing in such horrible torment.

“But that opened the eyes of the young King (for the Prince of Wales had been made King; ay, and all the hour of his crowning, Dame Isabelle stood by, and made believe to weep for her lord): he began to see what a serpent was his mother; and I daresay Brother John de Gaytenby, the Friar Predicant who was his confessor, let not the matter sleep. And no sooner did Edward of Windsor gain his full power, than he shut up the wicked Jezebel his mother in the Castle of Rising. She lived there twenty years: she died there, fourteen years ago.

“So the tide turned. The friends of Dame Isabelle died on the scaffold, four years later, even ashehad died; and we heard it at Sempringham, and knew that God and the saints and angels had taken up our cause at last. Child, God’s mill grindeth slowly, but it grindeth very small.

“Ere this, Hugh, my brother, had been granted his life by the King, but not our father’s earldom (see Note 5); and when my father had been dead only two years, leaving such awful memories—our mother wedded again. Ah, well! she was our mother. But, child, I have seen a caterpillar, shaken rudely from the fragrant petals of a rose, crawl to the next weed that grew. She was fair and well-dowered; and against the King’s will, she wedded the Lord de la Zouche, in whose custody she was.

“And now for the end of my woeful tale, which is the story of Isabel herself. For, one year later, the Castle of Arundel was given back to Richard Fitzalan; and two years thereafter the Lady of Arundel died. Listen a little longer with patience: for the saddest part of the story is that yet to come.

“When Richard and Isabel went back to the Castle of Arundel, I was a young novice, just admitted. And considering the second marriage of our mother, and the death of the Lady of Arundel, and the extreme youth of Isabel (who was not yet fourteen), I was permitted to reside very much with her. A woeful residence it was; for now began the fourteen terrible years of my darling’s passion.

“For no sooner was his mother’s gentle hand removed, than, even on the very day of her burial, Earl Richard threw off the mask.

“Before that time, I had wonderingly doubted if he loved her. I knew then that he hated her. And I found one other thing, sadder yet—that she loved him. I confess unto thee, by the blessed ankle-bones of Saint Denis, that I never could make out why. I never saw in him anything to love; and had I so done, methinks he had soon had that folly out of me. At first I scarcely understood all. I used to see livid blue bruises on her neck and arms, and ask her wherefore they were there; and she would only flush faintly, and say,—‘It is nothing—I struck myself against something.’ I never knew for months against what she struck. But she never complained—not even to me. She was patient as an angel of God.

“Now and then I used to notice that there came to the castle an aged man, in the garb of the Friars Predicants; unto whom—and to him only—Isabel used to confess. So changed was he from his old self, that I never knew till long after that this was our father’s old confessor, Giles de Edingdon. She only said to me that he taught her good things. If he taught her her saintly endurance, it was good. But I fear he taught her other things as well: to hold in light esteem that blessed doctrine of grace of condignity, whereby man can and doth merit the favour of God. And what he gave her instead thereof I know not. She used to tell me, but I forget now. Only once, in an awful hour, she said unto me, that but for the knowledge he had given her, she could not have borne her life.

“What was that hour?—Ah! it was the hour, when for the first time he threw aside all care, even before me, and struck her senseless on the rushes at my feet. And I never forgave him. She forgave him, poor innocent!—nay, rather, I think she loved him too well to think of forgiveness. I never saw love like hers; it would have borne death itself, and have kissed the murderer’s hand in dying. Some women do love so. I never did, nor could.

“But when this awful hour came, and she fell at my feet, as if dead, by a blow from his hand in anger,—the spirit of my fathers came upon me, and like a prophetess of woe, child, I stood forth and cursed him! I think God spake by me, for words seemed to come from me without my will; and I said that for two generations the heir of his house should die by violence in the flower of his age (See Note 6). Thou mayest see if it be so; but I never shall.

“And what said he?—He said, bowing his head low,—‘Sister Joan La Despenser is a great flatterer. Pray, accept my thanks. Henceforward, she may perhaps find the calm glades of Shaftesbury more pleasant than the bowers of Arundel. At least, I venture to beg that she will make the trial.’ And he went forth, calling to his hounds.

“Ay, went forth, without another word, and left her lying there at my feet—her, to save whom one pang of pain I would have laid down my life. And the portcullis was shut upon me. I was powerless to save her from that man: I was to see her again no more. I did see her again no more for ever. I waited till her sense came back, when she said she was not hurt, and fell to excusing him. I felt as though I could have torn him limb from limb. But that would have pained her.

“And then, when she was restored, I went forth from the Castle of Arundel. I had been dismissed by the master; and dearly as I loved her, I was too proud to be dismissed twice. So we took our farewell. Her soft cheek pressed to mine—for the last time; her dear eyes looking into mine—for the last time; her sweet, low voice blessing me—for the last time.

“And what were her last words, saidst thou? I cannot repeat them tearlessly, even now.

“‘God grant thee the Living Water.’

“Those were they. She had spoken to me oft—though I had not much cared to listen, except to her sweet voice—of something whereof this Giles had told her; some kind of fairy tale, regarding this life as a desert, and of some Well of pure, fresh water, deep down therein. I know not what. I cared for all that came from her, but I cared nought for what came only through her from Giles de Edingdon. But she said God had given her a draught of that Living Water, and she was at rest. I know nothing about it. But I am glad if anything gave her rest from that anguish—even a fairy tale.

“Well, after that I saw her no more again. But now and then, when mine hunger for her could no longer be appeased, I used to come to the Convent of Arundel, and send word to Alina, thy nurse, to come to me thither. And so, from time to time, I had word of her.

“The years passed on, and with them he grew harder and harder. He had hated her, first, I think, from the fancy that my father had been after some manner the cause of his father’s violent end; and after that he hated her for herself. And as time passed, and she had no child, he hated her worse than ever. But at last, after many years, God gave her one—thyself. I thought, perchance, if anything would soften him, thy smiles and babyish ways might do it. But—soften him! It had been easier to soften a rock of stone. When he knew that it was only a girl that was born, he hated her worse than ever. Three years more; then the last blow fell. Earl Henry of Lancaster bade him to his castle. As they talked, quoth the Earl,—‘I would you had not been a wedded man, my Lord of Arundel; I had gladly given you one of my daughters.’—‘Pure foy!’ quoth he, ‘but that need be no hindrance, nor shall long.’ Nor was it. He sent to our holy Father the Pope—with some lie, I trow—and received a divorce, and a dispensation to wed Alianora, his cousin, the young widow of the Lord de Beaumont, son of that Sir Henry that captured the King and my father. All the while he told Isabel nothing. The meanest of her scullions knew of the coming woe before she knew it. The night ere Earl Richard should be re-wedded, he thought proper to dismiss his discarded wife.

“‘Dame,’ said he to her, as he rose from the supper-table, ‘I pray you, give good ear for a moment to what my chaplain is about to read.’

“He was always cruelly courteous before men.

“She stayed and listened. Then she grew faint and white—then she grasped the seat to support her—then she lost hold and sense, and fell down as if dead before him. Poor, miserably-crushed heart! She loved this monster so well!

“He waited till she came to herself. Then he gave the last stroke.

“‘I depart now,’ said he, ‘to fetch home my bride. May I beg that the Lady Isabel La Despenser will quit the castle before she comes. It would be very unpleasant to her otherwise.’

“Unpleasant—to Alianora! And to Isabel, what would it be? Little he recked of that. She had received her dismissal. He had said to her, in effect,—‘You are my wife, and Lady of Arundel, no more.’

“She lifted herself up a little, and looked into his face. She knew she was looking upon him for the last time. And once more the fervent, unvalued, long-outraged love broke forth,—once more, for the last time.

“‘My lord! my lord!’ she wailed. ‘Leave me not so, Richard! Give me one kiss for farewell!’

“He did not lift her from the ground; he did not kiss her; but he was not quite silent to that last bitter cry. He held forth his hand—the hand which had been uplifted to strike her so often. She clasped it in hers, and kissed it many times. And that was his farewell.

“When he had drawn his hand from her, and was gone forth, she sat a season like a statue, listening. She hearkened till she heard him ride away—on his way to Alianora. Then, as if some prop that had held her up were suddenly withdrawn, she fell forward, and lay with her face to the rushes. All that awful night she lay there. Alina came to her, and strove to lift her, to give her food, to yield her comfort: but she took no heed of anything. When the dawn came, she arose, and wrapped herself in her mantle. She took no money, no jewels—not an ouche nor a grain of gold. Only she wrapped in silk two locks of hair—his and thine. I should have left the first behind. Then, when she was seated on the horse to depart, the page told her who mounted afore, that his Lord had given him command to take her to a certain place, which was not to be told beforehand.

“Alina said she shivered a little at this; but she only answered, ‘Do my lord’s will.’ Then she asked for thee. Alina lifted thee up to her, and she clasped thee close underneath her veil, and kissed thee tenderly. And that was thy last mother’s kiss.”

“Then that is what I remember!” broke in Philippa suddenly.

“It is impossible, child!” answered Joan. “Thou wert but a babe of three years old.”

“But I do—I am sure I do!” she repeated.

“Have thy way,” said Joan. “If thou so thinkest, I will not gainsay thee. Well, she gave thee back in a few minutes; and then she rode away—never pausing to look back—no man knew whither.”

“But what became of her?”

“God wotteth. Sometimes I hope he murdered her. One sin more or less would matter little to the black list of sins on his guilty soul; and the little pain of dying by violence would have saved Isabel the greater pain of living through the desolate woe of the future. But I never knew, as I told thee. Nor shall I ever know, till that last day come when the Great Doom shall be, and he and she shall stand together before the bar of God. There shall be an end to her torment then. It is something to think that there shall be no end to his.”

So, in a tone of bitter, passionate vindictiveness, Joan La Despenser closed her story.

Philippa sat silent, wondering many things. If Guy of Ashridge knew any thing of this, if Giles de Edingdon were yet living, if Agnes the lavender had ever found out what became of her revered mistress. And when she knelt down to tell her beads that night, a very strange and terrible prayer lingered on her lips the last and most earnestly of all. It was, that she might never again see her father’s face. She felt that had she done so, the spirit of the prophetess might have seized upon her as upon Joan; that, terrified as she had always been of him, she should now have stood up before him and have cursed him to his face.

Note 1. Edmund Fitzalan was premier Earl as Earl of Surrey, which title he acquired by his marriage with Alesia, sister and heir of John de Warrenne, last Earl of Surrey of the original male line.

Note 2. Probably owing to the great mortality among the nobles caused by the French war, a man who survived fifty was regarded as very old in the reign of Edward the Third.

Note 3. This is Froissart’s account of the events, and his dates have been mainly followed. Many writers give a varying narrative, stating that the King and Earl did reach Wales, and were taken there in a wood. Their dates are also about a month later. The inquisitions of the Despensers, as is usual in the case of attainted persons, do not give the date of death.

Note 4. The castle was granted to Edmund Earl of Kent, brother of Edward the Second; and there, on his attainder and execution, four years later, his widow and children were arrested.

Note 5. The earldom did not return to the Despenser family until 1397, when it was conferred on the great-grandson of the attainted Earl.

Note 6. Earl Richard, his son, was beheaded in London, in the spring of 1397; Earl Thomas, his grandson, fell at Agincourt, October 13, 1415.

Chapter Six.Elaine.“No has visto un niño, que vieneA dar un doblon que tiene,Porque le den una flor?”Lope de Vega.Philippa determined to return home by way of Sempringham. She could not have given any very cogent reason, except that she wished to see the place where the only peaceful days of her mother’s life had been passed. Perhaps peace might there come to her also; and she was far enough from it now. It would have been strange indeed if peace had dwelt in a heart where was neither “glory to God” nor “good-will to men.” And while her veneration for her mother’s memory was heightened by her aunt’s narrative, her feeling towards her father, originally a shrinking timidity, had changed now into active hatred. Had she at that moment been summoned to his deathbed, she would either have refused to go near him at all, or have gone with positive pleasure.But beside all this, Philippa could not avoid the conclusion that her salvation was as far from being accomplished as it had been when she reached Shaftesbury. She felt further off it than ever; it appeared to recede from her at every approach. Very uneasily she remembered Guy’s farewell words,—“God strip you of your own goodness!” The Living Water seemed as distant as before; but the thirst grew more intense. And yet, like Hagar in the wilderness, the Well was beside her all the time; but until the Angel of the Lord should open her eyes, she could not see it.She reached Sempringham, and took up her abode for the night in the convent, uncertain how long she would remain there. An apparently trivial incident decided that question for her.As Philippa stood at the convent gate, in a mild winter morning, she heard a soft, sweet voice singing, and set herself to discover whence the sound proceeded. The vocalist was readily found,—a little girl of ten years old, who was sitting on a bank a few yards from the gate, with a quantity of snowdrops in her lap, which she was trying with partial success to weave into a wreath. Philippa—weary of idleness, Books of Hours, and embroidery—drew near to talk with her.“What is thy name?” she asked, by way of opening negotiations.“Elaine,” said the child, lifting a pair of timid blue eyes to her questioner’s face.“And where dwellest thou?”“Down yonder glade, Lady: my father is Wilfred the convent woodcutter.”“And who taught thee to speak French?”“The holy sisters, Lady.”“What wert thou singing a minute since?”The child drooped her head shyly.“Do not be afraid,” said Philippa gently. “I like to hear singing. Wilt thou sing it again to me?”Elaine hesitated a moment; but another glance at Philippa’s smiling face seemed to reassure her, and she sang, in a low voice, to a sweet, weird tune:—“‘Quy de cette eaw boyraAncor soyf aura;Mays quy de l’eaw boyraQue moy luy donneray,Jamays soyf n’auraA l’éternité.’”“This must be very widely known,” thought Philippa.—“Who taught thee that—the holy sisters?” she asked of the child.“No,” answered Elaine, shaking her head. “The Grey Lady.”“And who is the Grey Lady?”The look with which Elaine replied, showed Philippa that not to know the Grey Lady was to augur herself unknown, at least in the Vale of Sempringham.“Know you not the Grey Lady? All in the Vale know her.”“Where dwelleth she?”“Up yonder”—but to Philippa’s eyes, Elaine merely pointed to a cluster of leafless trees on the hill-side.“And is she one of the holy sisters?”On this point Elaine was evidently doubtful. The Grey Lady did not dwell in the convent, nor in any convent; she lived all alone, therefore it was plain that she was not a sister. But she was always habited in grey wherefore men called her the Grey Lady. No—she had no other name.“A recluse, manifestly,” said Philippa to herself; “the child does not understand. But is she an anchoritess or an eremitess?—Does she ever leave her cell?” (See Note 1.)“Lady, she tendeth all the sick hereabout. She is a friend of every woman in the Vale. My mother saith, an’ it like you, that where there is any wound to heal, or heart to comfort, there is the Grey Lady. And she saith she hath a wonderful power of healing, as well for mind as body. When Edeline our neighbour lost all her four children by fever between the two Saint Agneses, (see Note 2), nobody could comfort her till the Grey Lady came. And when Ida my playmate lay dying, and very fearful of death, she said even the holy priest did her not so much good as the Grey Lady. I think,” ended Elaine softly, “she must be an angel in disguise.”The child evidently spoke her thought literally.“I will wait and see this Grey Lady,” thought Philippa. “Let me see if she can teach and comfort me. Ever since Guy of Ashridge visited Kilquyt, I seem to have been going further from comfort every day.—Canst thou lead me to the Grey Lady’s cell?”“I could; but she is not now there, Lady.”“When will she be there?”“To-morrow, when the shadow beginneth to lengthen,” replied Elaine, who was evidently well acquainted with the Grey Lady’s proceedings.“Then to-morrow, when the shadow beginneth to lengthen, thou shalt come to the convent gate, and I will meet with thee. Will thy mother give thee leave?”“Ay. She alway giveth me leave to visit the Grey Lady.”The appointment was made, and Philippa turned back to the convent.“I was searching you, Lady de Sergeaux,” said the portress, when Philippa re-entered the gate. “During your absence, there came to the priory close by a messenger from Arundel on his road toward Hereford; and hearing that the Lady de Sergeaux was with us, he sent word through a lay-brother that he would gladly have speech of you.”“A messenger from Arundel! What can he want with me?”Philippa felt that all messengers from Arundel would be very unwelcome to her. She added, rather ungraciously, that “perhaps she had better see him.” She passed into the guest-chamber, whither in a few minutes the messenger came to her. He was a page, habited in deep mourning; and Philippa recognised him at once as the personal “varlet” attendant on the Countess. The thought rose to her mind that the Earl might have fallen in Gascony.“God keep thee, good Hubert!” she said. “Be thy tidings evil?”“As evil as they might be, Lady,” answered the page sadly. “Two days before the feast of Saint Hilary, our Lady the Countess Alianora was commanded to God.”A tumult of conflicting feelings went surging through Philippa’s heart and brain.“Was thy Lord at home?”She inwardly hoped that he was not. It was only fitting, said the vindictive hatred which had usurped the place of her conscience, that Alianora of Lancaster should feel something of that to which she had helped to doom Isabel La Despenser.“Lady, no. Our Lord abideth in Gascony, with the Duke of Lancaster.”Philippa was not sorry to hear it; for her heart was full of “envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness.”When the shadow began to lengthen on the following day, Philippa wrapped her mantle around her, and called to her damsel to follow. Her varlet followed also, at a little distance behind. She found Elaine and a younger child waiting for her outside the gate. Elaine introduced her companion as her sister Annora. Annora proved much less shy than Elaine, and far more ready with her communications. But she was not asked many questions; for as they turned away from the convent gate, they were met by a monk in the Dominican habit, and Philippa knew directly the face of Guy of Ashridge.“Christ save you, Father,” said she.“And you, daughter,” he answered. “Are you yet seeking comfort, or have you found it?”“I am further from it than ever,” she replied, rather petulantly.“No wonder,” said Guy. “For comfort hath another name, which is—Christ. Who is a stranger to the One shall needs be a stranger to the other.”“I have tried hard to make my salvation,” responded Philippa more sadly; “but as yet I cannot do it.”“Nor will you, though you could try a thousand years,” answered Guy. “That is a manufacture beyond saints and angels, and how then shall you do it?”“Who then can do it?”“God,” said Guy, solemnly.“God hates me,” replied Philippa, under her breath. “He hateth all mine house. For nigh fifty years, He hath sent us sorrow upon sorrow, and hath crushed us down into the dust of death.”“Poor blindling! is that a proof that He hateth you?” answered Guy more gently. “Well, it is true at times, when the father sendeth a varlet in haste to save the child from falling over a precipice, the child—whose heart is set on some fair flower on the rock below—doth think it cruel. You are that child; and your trouble is the varlet God hath sent after you.”“He hath sent His whole meynie, then,” said Philippa bitterly.“Then the child will not come to the Father?” said Guy, softly.Philippa was silent.“Is the flower so fair, that you will risk life for it?” pursued the monk. “Nay, not risk—that is a word implying doubt, and here is none. So fair, then, that you will throw life away for it? And is the Father not fair and precious in your eyes, that you are in so little haste to come to Him? Daughter, what shall it profit you, if you gain the whole world—and lose your own soul?”“Father, you are too hard upon me!” cried Philippa in a pained tone, and resisting with some difficulty a strong inclination to shed tears. “I would come to God, but I know not how, nor do you tell me. God is afar off, and hath no leisure nor will to think on me; nor can I presume to approach Him without the holy saints to intercede for me. I have sought their intercession hundreds of times. It is not I that am unwilling to be saved; and you speak to me as if you thought it so. It is God that will not save me. I have done all I can.”“O fool, and slow of heart to believe!” earnestly answered Guy. “Can it be God, when He cared so much for you that He sent His blessed Son down from Heaven to die for your salvation? Beware how you accuse the Lord. I tell you again, it is not His will that opposeth itself to your happiness, but your own. You have built up a wall of your own excellencies that you cannot see God; and then you cry, ‘He hath hidden Himself from me.’ Pull down your miserable mud walls, and let the light of Heaven shine in upon you. Christ will save you with no half nor quarter salvation. He will not let you lay the foundation whereon He shall build. He will not tear His fair shining robe of righteousness to patch your worthless rags. With Him, either not at all, or all in all.”“But what would you have me do?” said Philippa, in a vexed tone.“Believe,” replied Guy.“Believe what?” said she.“‘Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.’”“The easiest thing in the world,” answered Philippa, a little contemptuously.“Is it so?” responded the monk, with a pitying smile. “It seems to me that you have found it since last June the hardest thing in the world. Whither go you now?” he asked, suddenly changing his tone.“I go,” she rejoined, “with this child, to the cell of an eremitess of whom she hath told me, ‘that hath,’ quoth she, ‘great power of comforting the sorrowful.’ All about here seem to know her. They call her the Grey Lady.”Guy looked on her long and earnestly, an expression creeping over his face which Philippa could not understand.“Be it so,” he said at last. “‘I will lead the blind by a way that they know not.’ Let my voice be silent when He speaketh. Verily”—and his voice fell to a softer tone—“I never passed through the deep waters wherein she has waded; nor, perchance, where you have. Let God speak to you through her. Go your way.”“But who is she—this Grey Lady?”Philippa asked in vain. Guy either did not hear her, or would not answer. He walked rapidly down the hill, with only “Farewell!” as he passed her; and she went her way, to meet her fate—rather, to meet God’s providence—in the cell of the Grey Lady.Note 1. Anchorites never left their cells, though they received visitors within them, and sometimes taught children; hermits wandered about freely.Note 2. Saint Agnes’ Day is January 21; but the 28th, instead of the octave of Saint Agnes, was commonly called Saint Agnes the second.

“No has visto un niño, que vieneA dar un doblon que tiene,Porque le den una flor?”Lope de Vega.

“No has visto un niño, que vieneA dar un doblon que tiene,Porque le den una flor?”Lope de Vega.

Philippa determined to return home by way of Sempringham. She could not have given any very cogent reason, except that she wished to see the place where the only peaceful days of her mother’s life had been passed. Perhaps peace might there come to her also; and she was far enough from it now. It would have been strange indeed if peace had dwelt in a heart where was neither “glory to God” nor “good-will to men.” And while her veneration for her mother’s memory was heightened by her aunt’s narrative, her feeling towards her father, originally a shrinking timidity, had changed now into active hatred. Had she at that moment been summoned to his deathbed, she would either have refused to go near him at all, or have gone with positive pleasure.

But beside all this, Philippa could not avoid the conclusion that her salvation was as far from being accomplished as it had been when she reached Shaftesbury. She felt further off it than ever; it appeared to recede from her at every approach. Very uneasily she remembered Guy’s farewell words,—“God strip you of your own goodness!” The Living Water seemed as distant as before; but the thirst grew more intense. And yet, like Hagar in the wilderness, the Well was beside her all the time; but until the Angel of the Lord should open her eyes, she could not see it.

She reached Sempringham, and took up her abode for the night in the convent, uncertain how long she would remain there. An apparently trivial incident decided that question for her.

As Philippa stood at the convent gate, in a mild winter morning, she heard a soft, sweet voice singing, and set herself to discover whence the sound proceeded. The vocalist was readily found,—a little girl of ten years old, who was sitting on a bank a few yards from the gate, with a quantity of snowdrops in her lap, which she was trying with partial success to weave into a wreath. Philippa—weary of idleness, Books of Hours, and embroidery—drew near to talk with her.

“What is thy name?” she asked, by way of opening negotiations.

“Elaine,” said the child, lifting a pair of timid blue eyes to her questioner’s face.

“And where dwellest thou?”

“Down yonder glade, Lady: my father is Wilfred the convent woodcutter.”

“And who taught thee to speak French?”

“The holy sisters, Lady.”

“What wert thou singing a minute since?”

The child drooped her head shyly.

“Do not be afraid,” said Philippa gently. “I like to hear singing. Wilt thou sing it again to me?”

Elaine hesitated a moment; but another glance at Philippa’s smiling face seemed to reassure her, and she sang, in a low voice, to a sweet, weird tune:—

“‘Quy de cette eaw boyraAncor soyf aura;Mays quy de l’eaw boyraQue moy luy donneray,Jamays soyf n’auraA l’éternité.’”

“‘Quy de cette eaw boyraAncor soyf aura;Mays quy de l’eaw boyraQue moy luy donneray,Jamays soyf n’auraA l’éternité.’”

“This must be very widely known,” thought Philippa.—“Who taught thee that—the holy sisters?” she asked of the child.

“No,” answered Elaine, shaking her head. “The Grey Lady.”

“And who is the Grey Lady?”

The look with which Elaine replied, showed Philippa that not to know the Grey Lady was to augur herself unknown, at least in the Vale of Sempringham.

“Know you not the Grey Lady? All in the Vale know her.”

“Where dwelleth she?”

“Up yonder”—but to Philippa’s eyes, Elaine merely pointed to a cluster of leafless trees on the hill-side.

“And is she one of the holy sisters?”

On this point Elaine was evidently doubtful. The Grey Lady did not dwell in the convent, nor in any convent; she lived all alone, therefore it was plain that she was not a sister. But she was always habited in grey wherefore men called her the Grey Lady. No—she had no other name.

“A recluse, manifestly,” said Philippa to herself; “the child does not understand. But is she an anchoritess or an eremitess?—Does she ever leave her cell?” (See Note 1.)

“Lady, she tendeth all the sick hereabout. She is a friend of every woman in the Vale. My mother saith, an’ it like you, that where there is any wound to heal, or heart to comfort, there is the Grey Lady. And she saith she hath a wonderful power of healing, as well for mind as body. When Edeline our neighbour lost all her four children by fever between the two Saint Agneses, (see Note 2), nobody could comfort her till the Grey Lady came. And when Ida my playmate lay dying, and very fearful of death, she said even the holy priest did her not so much good as the Grey Lady. I think,” ended Elaine softly, “she must be an angel in disguise.”

The child evidently spoke her thought literally.

“I will wait and see this Grey Lady,” thought Philippa. “Let me see if she can teach and comfort me. Ever since Guy of Ashridge visited Kilquyt, I seem to have been going further from comfort every day.—Canst thou lead me to the Grey Lady’s cell?”

“I could; but she is not now there, Lady.”

“When will she be there?”

“To-morrow, when the shadow beginneth to lengthen,” replied Elaine, who was evidently well acquainted with the Grey Lady’s proceedings.

“Then to-morrow, when the shadow beginneth to lengthen, thou shalt come to the convent gate, and I will meet with thee. Will thy mother give thee leave?”

“Ay. She alway giveth me leave to visit the Grey Lady.”

The appointment was made, and Philippa turned back to the convent.

“I was searching you, Lady de Sergeaux,” said the portress, when Philippa re-entered the gate. “During your absence, there came to the priory close by a messenger from Arundel on his road toward Hereford; and hearing that the Lady de Sergeaux was with us, he sent word through a lay-brother that he would gladly have speech of you.”

“A messenger from Arundel! What can he want with me?”

Philippa felt that all messengers from Arundel would be very unwelcome to her. She added, rather ungraciously, that “perhaps she had better see him.” She passed into the guest-chamber, whither in a few minutes the messenger came to her. He was a page, habited in deep mourning; and Philippa recognised him at once as the personal “varlet” attendant on the Countess. The thought rose to her mind that the Earl might have fallen in Gascony.

“God keep thee, good Hubert!” she said. “Be thy tidings evil?”

“As evil as they might be, Lady,” answered the page sadly. “Two days before the feast of Saint Hilary, our Lady the Countess Alianora was commanded to God.”

A tumult of conflicting feelings went surging through Philippa’s heart and brain.

“Was thy Lord at home?”

She inwardly hoped that he was not. It was only fitting, said the vindictive hatred which had usurped the place of her conscience, that Alianora of Lancaster should feel something of that to which she had helped to doom Isabel La Despenser.

“Lady, no. Our Lord abideth in Gascony, with the Duke of Lancaster.”

Philippa was not sorry to hear it; for her heart was full of “envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness.”

When the shadow began to lengthen on the following day, Philippa wrapped her mantle around her, and called to her damsel to follow. Her varlet followed also, at a little distance behind. She found Elaine and a younger child waiting for her outside the gate. Elaine introduced her companion as her sister Annora. Annora proved much less shy than Elaine, and far more ready with her communications. But she was not asked many questions; for as they turned away from the convent gate, they were met by a monk in the Dominican habit, and Philippa knew directly the face of Guy of Ashridge.

“Christ save you, Father,” said she.

“And you, daughter,” he answered. “Are you yet seeking comfort, or have you found it?”

“I am further from it than ever,” she replied, rather petulantly.

“No wonder,” said Guy. “For comfort hath another name, which is—Christ. Who is a stranger to the One shall needs be a stranger to the other.”

“I have tried hard to make my salvation,” responded Philippa more sadly; “but as yet I cannot do it.”

“Nor will you, though you could try a thousand years,” answered Guy. “That is a manufacture beyond saints and angels, and how then shall you do it?”

“Who then can do it?”

“God,” said Guy, solemnly.

“God hates me,” replied Philippa, under her breath. “He hateth all mine house. For nigh fifty years, He hath sent us sorrow upon sorrow, and hath crushed us down into the dust of death.”

“Poor blindling! is that a proof that He hateth you?” answered Guy more gently. “Well, it is true at times, when the father sendeth a varlet in haste to save the child from falling over a precipice, the child—whose heart is set on some fair flower on the rock below—doth think it cruel. You are that child; and your trouble is the varlet God hath sent after you.”

“He hath sent His whole meynie, then,” said Philippa bitterly.

“Then the child will not come to the Father?” said Guy, softly.

Philippa was silent.

“Is the flower so fair, that you will risk life for it?” pursued the monk. “Nay, not risk—that is a word implying doubt, and here is none. So fair, then, that you will throw life away for it? And is the Father not fair and precious in your eyes, that you are in so little haste to come to Him? Daughter, what shall it profit you, if you gain the whole world—and lose your own soul?”

“Father, you are too hard upon me!” cried Philippa in a pained tone, and resisting with some difficulty a strong inclination to shed tears. “I would come to God, but I know not how, nor do you tell me. God is afar off, and hath no leisure nor will to think on me; nor can I presume to approach Him without the holy saints to intercede for me. I have sought their intercession hundreds of times. It is not I that am unwilling to be saved; and you speak to me as if you thought it so. It is God that will not save me. I have done all I can.”

“O fool, and slow of heart to believe!” earnestly answered Guy. “Can it be God, when He cared so much for you that He sent His blessed Son down from Heaven to die for your salvation? Beware how you accuse the Lord. I tell you again, it is not His will that opposeth itself to your happiness, but your own. You have built up a wall of your own excellencies that you cannot see God; and then you cry, ‘He hath hidden Himself from me.’ Pull down your miserable mud walls, and let the light of Heaven shine in upon you. Christ will save you with no half nor quarter salvation. He will not let you lay the foundation whereon He shall build. He will not tear His fair shining robe of righteousness to patch your worthless rags. With Him, either not at all, or all in all.”

“But what would you have me do?” said Philippa, in a vexed tone.

“Believe,” replied Guy.

“Believe what?” said she.

“‘Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.’”

“The easiest thing in the world,” answered Philippa, a little contemptuously.

“Is it so?” responded the monk, with a pitying smile. “It seems to me that you have found it since last June the hardest thing in the world. Whither go you now?” he asked, suddenly changing his tone.

“I go,” she rejoined, “with this child, to the cell of an eremitess of whom she hath told me, ‘that hath,’ quoth she, ‘great power of comforting the sorrowful.’ All about here seem to know her. They call her the Grey Lady.”

Guy looked on her long and earnestly, an expression creeping over his face which Philippa could not understand.

“Be it so,” he said at last. “‘I will lead the blind by a way that they know not.’ Let my voice be silent when He speaketh. Verily”—and his voice fell to a softer tone—“I never passed through the deep waters wherein she has waded; nor, perchance, where you have. Let God speak to you through her. Go your way.”

“But who is she—this Grey Lady?”

Philippa asked in vain. Guy either did not hear her, or would not answer. He walked rapidly down the hill, with only “Farewell!” as he passed her; and she went her way, to meet her fate—rather, to meet God’s providence—in the cell of the Grey Lady.

Note 1. Anchorites never left their cells, though they received visitors within them, and sometimes taught children; hermits wandered about freely.

Note 2. Saint Agnes’ Day is January 21; but the 28th, instead of the octave of Saint Agnes, was commonly called Saint Agnes the second.

Chapter Seven.In the cell of the Grey Lady.“Blood must be my body’s balmer,—While my soule, like peaceful palmer,Travelleth toward the Land of Heaven,Other balm will not be given.”Sir Walter Raleigh.Elaine tapped softly on the weatherbeaten door of the cell. It was merely hollowed out in the rock, and built up in front, with a low door and a very little window.“Who is it?” asked a soft voice from within.“Elaine and Annora,” replied the little girl.“Come in, my children.”Motioning Philippa to wait for her an instant, Elaine lifted the latch and entered, half closing the door behind her. Some low-toned conversation followed within the cell; and then Elaine opened the door, and asked Philippa to enter. The Grey Lady stood before her.What she saw was a tall, slender, delicate figure, attired in dark grey. The figure alone was visible, for over the face the veil was drawn down. But Philippa’s own knowledge of aristocratic life told her in an instant that the reverence with which she was received was that of a high-born lady. It was plain that the eremitess was no peasant.Elaine seemed to know that she was no longer wanted, and she drew Annora away. The children went dancing through the wood, and Philippa, desiring Lena and Oliver to await her pleasure, shut the door of the cell.“Mother,” she began—for recluses were addressed as professed nuns, and were indeed regarded as the holiest of all celibates—“I desire your help.”“For body or soul?” was the reply.“For the soul—for the life,” said Philippa.“Ay,” replied the eremitess; “the soul is the life.”“Know you Guy of Ashridge?” asked Philippa.The Grey Lady bowed her head.“I have confessed to him, and he hath dealt hardly with me. He saith I will not be saved; and I wish to be saved. He tells me to come to Christ, and I know not how to come, and he saith he cannot make me understand how. He saith God loveth me, because He hath given me a very desolate and unhappy life; and I think He hateth me by that token. In short, Father Guy tells me to do what I cannot do, and then he saith I will not do it. Will you teach me, and comfort me, if you can? The monk only makes me more unhappy. And I do not want to be unhappy. I want comfort—I want rest—I want peace. Tell me how to obtain it!”“No one wishes to be unhappy,” said the eremitess, in her gentle accents; “but sometimes we mistake the medicine we need. Before I can give you medicine, I must know your disease.”“My disease is weariness and sorrow,” answered Philippa. “I love none, and none loveth me. None hath ever loved me. I hate all men.”“And God?”“I do not know God,” she said, her voice sinking. “He is afar off, and will come no nearer.”“Or you are afar off, and will go no nearer? Which is it?”“I think it is the first,” she answered; “Guy of Ashridge will have it to be the second. I cannot get at God—that is all I know. And it is not for want of praying. I have begged the intercession of my patron, the holy Apostle Saint Philip, hundreds of times.”“Do you know why you cannot get at God?”“No. If you can guess, tell me why it is.”“Because you have gone the wrong way. You have not found the door. You are trying to break through over the wall. And ‘he that entereth not by the door into the sheep-fold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.’”“Explain to me what you mean, Mother, an’ it like you.”“You know how Adam sinned in Paradise?” asked the Grey Lady.“When he and Eva disobeyed God, and ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree? Yes, I have heard that.”“He built up a terrible wall between him and God. Every man, as born into this world, is on the hither side of that wall. He knoweth not God, he loveth not God, he careth not for God.”“But that is not the case with me,” objected Philippa; “for I do wish for Him. I want some one to love me; and I should not mind if it were God. Even He were better than none.”The Grey Lady’s veil trembled a little, as Philippa thought; but she sat meditating for an instant.“Before I answer your last remark,” she said, “will you tell me a little of your life? I might know better how to reply. You are a married woman, of course, for your dress is not that of a nun, nor of a widow. Have you children? Are your parents living?”“I have no child,” said Philippa: and the Grey Lady’s penetration must have been obtuse if she were unable to detect a tone of deep sadness underlying the words. “And parents—living—did you ask me? By Mary, Mother and Maiden, I have but one living, and I hate—I hate him!” The passionate energy with which the last words were spoken told its own tale.“Then it is no marvel,” answered the Grey Lady, in a very different tone from Philippa’s, “that you come to me with a tale of sorrow. Where there is hatred there can be no peace; and without peace there can be no hope.”“Hope!” exclaimed Philippa, bitterly. “What is there for me to hope? Who ever cared for me? Who ever asked me if I were happy? Nobody loves me—why should I love anybody?”“‘God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.’”The words fell like cooling water on the hot fire of Philippa’s bitterness; but she made no answer.“Had God waited for us to love Him,” resumed the eremitess, “where had we been now? ‘We love Him, because He first loved us.’”“He never loved me,” answered Philippa, mournfully.“He loved me so much,” said the Grey Lady, softly, “that He made the way rough, that He might help me over it; He made the waters deep, that He might carry me through them; He caused the rain to fall heavily, that I might run to Him for shelter; He made ‘mine earthly house of this tabernacle’ dreary and cold, that I might find the rest, and light, and warmth of His home above so much the sweeter. Yea, He made me friendless, that I might seek and find in Jesu Christ the one Friend who would never forsake me, the one love that would never weary nor wax cold.”Philippa shook her head. She had never looked at her troubles in this light “But if the way be thus rough, and yet you will walk in it alone, though your feet be bleeding; if the waters be deep, and yet you will strive to ford them unaided; if the house be drear and lonely, and yet you will not rise up and go home—is it any wonder that you are sorrowful, or that you do not know Him whose love you put thus away from you? And you tell me that God’s love were better to you than none! Better than none!—better than any, better than all! Man’s love can save from some afflictions, I grant: but from how many it can not! Can human love keep you from sickness?—from sorrow?—from poverty?—from death? Yet the love of Christ can take the sting from all these,—can keep you calm and peaceful through them all. They will remain, and you will feel them; but the sting will be gone. There will be an underlying calm; the wind may ruffle the surface, but it cannot reach beneath. The lamb is safe in the arms of the Shepherd, but it does not hold itself there. He who shed His blood for us on the rood keepeth us safe, and none shall be able to pluck us out of His hand. O Lady, if ‘thou knewest the gift of God, thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given thee Living Water.’”“They tell me of that Living Water, one and all; and I would fain drink thereof; but I am in the desert, and the Well is afar off, and I know not where to find it.” Philippa spoke not angrily now, but very sorrowfully.“And ‘thou hast nothing to draw with, and the Well is deep.’”“That is just what I feel,” said Philippa, earnestly.“Yet it is close beside you,” answered the Grey Lady. “The water is drawn, and ready. All that is needed is your outstretched hand to take it. Christ giveth the Living Water; Christ is the Door by which, if any man enter in, he shall be saved; Christ is our peace with God. You have not to make peace; for them that take Christ’s salvation, peace is made. You can never make peace: it took Christ to make it. Your salvation—if you be saved at all—was finished thirteen hundred years ago. God hath provided this salvation for you, and all your life He hath been holding it forth to you—hath been calling you by all these your sorrows to come and take it. So many years as you have lived in this world, so many years you have grieved Him by turning a deaf ear and a cold heart towards His great heart and open hand held forth to you—towards His loving voice bidding you come to Him. Oh grieve Him no longer! Let your own works, your own goodness, your own sufferings, drop from you as the cast-off rags of a beggar, and wrap yourself in the fair white robe of righteousness which the King giveth you—which He hath wrought Himself on purpose for you,—for which He asks no price from you, for He paid the price Himself in His own blood. He came not to live, and work, and suffer, for Himself, but for you. You complain that none loveth you: all these years there hath been love unutterable waiting for you, and you will not take it.”It seemed to Philippa a very fair picture. Never before had the Garden of God looked so beautiful, to her who stood waiting without the gate. But there appeared to be barriers between it and her, which she could not pass: and in especial one loomed up before her, dark and insuperable.“But—must I forgive my father?”“You must come to Christ ere you do any thing. After that—when He hath given you His forgiving Spirit, and His strength to forgive—certainly you must forgive your father.”“Whatever he hath done?”“Whatever he hath done.”“I can never do that,” replied Philippa, yet rather regretfully than angrily. “What he did to me I might; but—”“I know,” said the Grey Lady quietly, when Philippa paused. “Itiseasier to forgive one’s own wrongs than those of others. I think your heart is not quite so loveless as you would persuade yourself.”“To the dead—no,” said Philippa huskily. “But to any who could love me in return—” and she paused again, leaving her sentence unended as before. “No, I never could forgive him.”“Never, of yourself,” was the answer. “But whoso taketh Christ for his Priest to atone, taketh Christ also for his King to govern. In him God worketh, bringing forth from his soul graces which He Himself hath first put there—graces which the natural heart never can bring forth. Faith is the first of these; then love; and then obedience. And both love and obedience teach forgiveness. ‘If ye forgive not men their trespasses, how then shall your Father which is in Heaven forgive your trespasses?’”“Then,” said Philippa, after a minute’s silence, during which she was deeply meditating, “what we give to God is these graces of which you speak?—we give Him faith, and love, and obedience?”“Assuredly—when He hath first implanted all within us.”“But what do we give of ourselves?” asked Philippa in a puzzled tone.“We giveourselves.”“This giving of ourselves, then,” pursued Philippa slowly, “maketh the grace of condignity?”“We give to God,” replied the low voice of the eremitess, “ourselves, and our sins. The last He purgeth away, and casteth them into the depths of the sea. Is there grace of condignity in them? And for us, when our sins are forgiven, and our souls cleansed, we are for ever committing further sin, for ever needing fresh cleansing and renewed pardon. Is there grace of condignity, then, in us?”“But where do you allow the grace of condignity?”“I allow it not at all.”Philippa shrank back a little. In her eyes, this was heresy.“You love not that,” said the Grey Lady gently. “But can you find any other way of salvation that will stand with the dignity of God? If man save himself, then is Christ no Saviour; if man take the first step towards God, then is Christ no Author, but only the Finisher of faith.”“It seems to me,” answered Philippa rather coldly, “that such a view as yours detracts from the dignity of man.”She could not see the smile that crossed the lips of the eremitess.“Most certainly it does,” said she.“And God made man,” objected Philippa. “To injure the dignity of man, therefore, is to affront the dignity of God.”“Dignity fell with Adam,” said the Grey Lady. “Satan fatally injured the dignity of man, when he crept into Eden. Man hath none left now, but only as he returneth unto God. And do you think there be any grace of condignity in a beggar, when he holdeth forth his hand to receive a garment in the convent dole? Is it such a condescension in him to accept the coat given to him, that he thereby earneth it of merit? Yet this, and less than this, is all that man can do toward God.”“Are you one of the Boni-Homines?” asked Philippa suddenly.She was beginning to recognise their doctrines now.“The family of God are one,” answered the Grey Lady, rather evasively. “He teacheth not different things to divers of His people, though He lead them by varying ways to the knowledge of the one truth.”“But are you one of the Boni-Homines?” Philippa repeated.“By birth—no.”“No,” echoed Philippa, “I should think not, by birth. Your accent and your manners show you high-born; and they are low-born varlets—common people.”“The common people,” answered the Grey Lady, “are usually those who hear Christ the most gladly. ‘Not many noble are called;’ yet, thank God, a few. But do you, then, count Archbishop Bradwardine, or Bishop Grosteste, or William de Edingdon, Bishop of Winchester and Chancellor of England,—among the common people?”“They were not amongthem?” exclaimed Philippa in contemptuous surprise.“Trust me, but they were,—two of them at least; and the third preached their doctrines, though he went not out from them.”“I could not have believed it!”“‘The wind bloweth where it listeth,’” said the Grey Lady, softly: but she hardly spoke to her visitor.Philippa rose. “I thank you for your counsel,” she said.“And you mean,notto follow it?” was the gentle response.“I do not know what I mean to do,” she said honestly. “I want to do right; but I cannot believe it right to deny the grace of condignity. It is so blessed a doctrine! How else shall men merit the favour of God? And I do not perceive, by your view, how men approach God at all.”“By God approaching them,” said the eremitess. “‘Whosoever will, let him take the Water of Life freely.’ But God provideth the water; man only receiveth it; and the will to receive it is of God, not of man’s own deed and effort. ‘It is God that worketh in us.’ Salvation is ‘not of works, lest any man should boast.’”“That is not the doctrine of holy Church,” answered Philippa, somewhat offended.“It is the doctrine of Saint Paul,” was the quiet rejoinder, “for the words I have just spoken are not mine, but his.”“Are you certain of that, Mother?”“Quite certain.”“Who told you them?”The Grey Lady turned, and took from a rough shelf or ledge, scooped out in the rocky wall of the little cavern, a small brown-covered volume.“I know not if you can read,” she said, offering the book to Lady Sergeaux; “but there are the words.”The little volume was no continuous Book of Scripture, but consisted of passages extracted almost at random, of varying lengths, apparently just as certain paragraphs had attracted her when she heard or read them.“Yes, I can read. My nurse taught me,” said Philippa, taking the little book from her hand.But her eyes lighted, the first thing, upon a passage which enchained them; and she read no further.“Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again; but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.”

“Blood must be my body’s balmer,—While my soule, like peaceful palmer,Travelleth toward the Land of Heaven,Other balm will not be given.”Sir Walter Raleigh.

“Blood must be my body’s balmer,—While my soule, like peaceful palmer,Travelleth toward the Land of Heaven,Other balm will not be given.”Sir Walter Raleigh.

Elaine tapped softly on the weatherbeaten door of the cell. It was merely hollowed out in the rock, and built up in front, with a low door and a very little window.

“Who is it?” asked a soft voice from within.

“Elaine and Annora,” replied the little girl.

“Come in, my children.”

Motioning Philippa to wait for her an instant, Elaine lifted the latch and entered, half closing the door behind her. Some low-toned conversation followed within the cell; and then Elaine opened the door, and asked Philippa to enter. The Grey Lady stood before her.

What she saw was a tall, slender, delicate figure, attired in dark grey. The figure alone was visible, for over the face the veil was drawn down. But Philippa’s own knowledge of aristocratic life told her in an instant that the reverence with which she was received was that of a high-born lady. It was plain that the eremitess was no peasant.

Elaine seemed to know that she was no longer wanted, and she drew Annora away. The children went dancing through the wood, and Philippa, desiring Lena and Oliver to await her pleasure, shut the door of the cell.

“Mother,” she began—for recluses were addressed as professed nuns, and were indeed regarded as the holiest of all celibates—“I desire your help.”

“For body or soul?” was the reply.

“For the soul—for the life,” said Philippa.

“Ay,” replied the eremitess; “the soul is the life.”

“Know you Guy of Ashridge?” asked Philippa.

The Grey Lady bowed her head.

“I have confessed to him, and he hath dealt hardly with me. He saith I will not be saved; and I wish to be saved. He tells me to come to Christ, and I know not how to come, and he saith he cannot make me understand how. He saith God loveth me, because He hath given me a very desolate and unhappy life; and I think He hateth me by that token. In short, Father Guy tells me to do what I cannot do, and then he saith I will not do it. Will you teach me, and comfort me, if you can? The monk only makes me more unhappy. And I do not want to be unhappy. I want comfort—I want rest—I want peace. Tell me how to obtain it!”

“No one wishes to be unhappy,” said the eremitess, in her gentle accents; “but sometimes we mistake the medicine we need. Before I can give you medicine, I must know your disease.”

“My disease is weariness and sorrow,” answered Philippa. “I love none, and none loveth me. None hath ever loved me. I hate all men.”

“And God?”

“I do not know God,” she said, her voice sinking. “He is afar off, and will come no nearer.”

“Or you are afar off, and will go no nearer? Which is it?”

“I think it is the first,” she answered; “Guy of Ashridge will have it to be the second. I cannot get at God—that is all I know. And it is not for want of praying. I have begged the intercession of my patron, the holy Apostle Saint Philip, hundreds of times.”

“Do you know why you cannot get at God?”

“No. If you can guess, tell me why it is.”

“Because you have gone the wrong way. You have not found the door. You are trying to break through over the wall. And ‘he that entereth not by the door into the sheep-fold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.’”

“Explain to me what you mean, Mother, an’ it like you.”

“You know how Adam sinned in Paradise?” asked the Grey Lady.

“When he and Eva disobeyed God, and ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree? Yes, I have heard that.”

“He built up a terrible wall between him and God. Every man, as born into this world, is on the hither side of that wall. He knoweth not God, he loveth not God, he careth not for God.”

“But that is not the case with me,” objected Philippa; “for I do wish for Him. I want some one to love me; and I should not mind if it were God. Even He were better than none.”

The Grey Lady’s veil trembled a little, as Philippa thought; but she sat meditating for an instant.

“Before I answer your last remark,” she said, “will you tell me a little of your life? I might know better how to reply. You are a married woman, of course, for your dress is not that of a nun, nor of a widow. Have you children? Are your parents living?”

“I have no child,” said Philippa: and the Grey Lady’s penetration must have been obtuse if she were unable to detect a tone of deep sadness underlying the words. “And parents—living—did you ask me? By Mary, Mother and Maiden, I have but one living, and I hate—I hate him!” The passionate energy with which the last words were spoken told its own tale.

“Then it is no marvel,” answered the Grey Lady, in a very different tone from Philippa’s, “that you come to me with a tale of sorrow. Where there is hatred there can be no peace; and without peace there can be no hope.”

“Hope!” exclaimed Philippa, bitterly. “What is there for me to hope? Who ever cared for me? Who ever asked me if I were happy? Nobody loves me—why should I love anybody?”

“‘God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.’”

The words fell like cooling water on the hot fire of Philippa’s bitterness; but she made no answer.

“Had God waited for us to love Him,” resumed the eremitess, “where had we been now? ‘We love Him, because He first loved us.’”

“He never loved me,” answered Philippa, mournfully.

“He loved me so much,” said the Grey Lady, softly, “that He made the way rough, that He might help me over it; He made the waters deep, that He might carry me through them; He caused the rain to fall heavily, that I might run to Him for shelter; He made ‘mine earthly house of this tabernacle’ dreary and cold, that I might find the rest, and light, and warmth of His home above so much the sweeter. Yea, He made me friendless, that I might seek and find in Jesu Christ the one Friend who would never forsake me, the one love that would never weary nor wax cold.”

Philippa shook her head. She had never looked at her troubles in this light “But if the way be thus rough, and yet you will walk in it alone, though your feet be bleeding; if the waters be deep, and yet you will strive to ford them unaided; if the house be drear and lonely, and yet you will not rise up and go home—is it any wonder that you are sorrowful, or that you do not know Him whose love you put thus away from you? And you tell me that God’s love were better to you than none! Better than none!—better than any, better than all! Man’s love can save from some afflictions, I grant: but from how many it can not! Can human love keep you from sickness?—from sorrow?—from poverty?—from death? Yet the love of Christ can take the sting from all these,—can keep you calm and peaceful through them all. They will remain, and you will feel them; but the sting will be gone. There will be an underlying calm; the wind may ruffle the surface, but it cannot reach beneath. The lamb is safe in the arms of the Shepherd, but it does not hold itself there. He who shed His blood for us on the rood keepeth us safe, and none shall be able to pluck us out of His hand. O Lady, if ‘thou knewest the gift of God, thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given thee Living Water.’”

“They tell me of that Living Water, one and all; and I would fain drink thereof; but I am in the desert, and the Well is afar off, and I know not where to find it.” Philippa spoke not angrily now, but very sorrowfully.

“And ‘thou hast nothing to draw with, and the Well is deep.’”

“That is just what I feel,” said Philippa, earnestly.

“Yet it is close beside you,” answered the Grey Lady. “The water is drawn, and ready. All that is needed is your outstretched hand to take it. Christ giveth the Living Water; Christ is the Door by which, if any man enter in, he shall be saved; Christ is our peace with God. You have not to make peace; for them that take Christ’s salvation, peace is made. You can never make peace: it took Christ to make it. Your salvation—if you be saved at all—was finished thirteen hundred years ago. God hath provided this salvation for you, and all your life He hath been holding it forth to you—hath been calling you by all these your sorrows to come and take it. So many years as you have lived in this world, so many years you have grieved Him by turning a deaf ear and a cold heart towards His great heart and open hand held forth to you—towards His loving voice bidding you come to Him. Oh grieve Him no longer! Let your own works, your own goodness, your own sufferings, drop from you as the cast-off rags of a beggar, and wrap yourself in the fair white robe of righteousness which the King giveth you—which He hath wrought Himself on purpose for you,—for which He asks no price from you, for He paid the price Himself in His own blood. He came not to live, and work, and suffer, for Himself, but for you. You complain that none loveth you: all these years there hath been love unutterable waiting for you, and you will not take it.”

It seemed to Philippa a very fair picture. Never before had the Garden of God looked so beautiful, to her who stood waiting without the gate. But there appeared to be barriers between it and her, which she could not pass: and in especial one loomed up before her, dark and insuperable.

“But—must I forgive my father?”

“You must come to Christ ere you do any thing. After that—when He hath given you His forgiving Spirit, and His strength to forgive—certainly you must forgive your father.”

“Whatever he hath done?”

“Whatever he hath done.”

“I can never do that,” replied Philippa, yet rather regretfully than angrily. “What he did to me I might; but—”

“I know,” said the Grey Lady quietly, when Philippa paused. “Itiseasier to forgive one’s own wrongs than those of others. I think your heart is not quite so loveless as you would persuade yourself.”

“To the dead—no,” said Philippa huskily. “But to any who could love me in return—” and she paused again, leaving her sentence unended as before. “No, I never could forgive him.”

“Never, of yourself,” was the answer. “But whoso taketh Christ for his Priest to atone, taketh Christ also for his King to govern. In him God worketh, bringing forth from his soul graces which He Himself hath first put there—graces which the natural heart never can bring forth. Faith is the first of these; then love; and then obedience. And both love and obedience teach forgiveness. ‘If ye forgive not men their trespasses, how then shall your Father which is in Heaven forgive your trespasses?’”

“Then,” said Philippa, after a minute’s silence, during which she was deeply meditating, “what we give to God is these graces of which you speak?—we give Him faith, and love, and obedience?”

“Assuredly—when He hath first implanted all within us.”

“But what do we give of ourselves?” asked Philippa in a puzzled tone.

“We giveourselves.”

“This giving of ourselves, then,” pursued Philippa slowly, “maketh the grace of condignity?”

“We give to God,” replied the low voice of the eremitess, “ourselves, and our sins. The last He purgeth away, and casteth them into the depths of the sea. Is there grace of condignity in them? And for us, when our sins are forgiven, and our souls cleansed, we are for ever committing further sin, for ever needing fresh cleansing and renewed pardon. Is there grace of condignity, then, in us?”

“But where do you allow the grace of condignity?”

“I allow it not at all.”

Philippa shrank back a little. In her eyes, this was heresy.

“You love not that,” said the Grey Lady gently. “But can you find any other way of salvation that will stand with the dignity of God? If man save himself, then is Christ no Saviour; if man take the first step towards God, then is Christ no Author, but only the Finisher of faith.”

“It seems to me,” answered Philippa rather coldly, “that such a view as yours detracts from the dignity of man.”

She could not see the smile that crossed the lips of the eremitess.

“Most certainly it does,” said she.

“And God made man,” objected Philippa. “To injure the dignity of man, therefore, is to affront the dignity of God.”

“Dignity fell with Adam,” said the Grey Lady. “Satan fatally injured the dignity of man, when he crept into Eden. Man hath none left now, but only as he returneth unto God. And do you think there be any grace of condignity in a beggar, when he holdeth forth his hand to receive a garment in the convent dole? Is it such a condescension in him to accept the coat given to him, that he thereby earneth it of merit? Yet this, and less than this, is all that man can do toward God.”

“Are you one of the Boni-Homines?” asked Philippa suddenly.

She was beginning to recognise their doctrines now.

“The family of God are one,” answered the Grey Lady, rather evasively. “He teacheth not different things to divers of His people, though He lead them by varying ways to the knowledge of the one truth.”

“But are you one of the Boni-Homines?” Philippa repeated.

“By birth—no.”

“No,” echoed Philippa, “I should think not, by birth. Your accent and your manners show you high-born; and they are low-born varlets—common people.”

“The common people,” answered the Grey Lady, “are usually those who hear Christ the most gladly. ‘Not many noble are called;’ yet, thank God, a few. But do you, then, count Archbishop Bradwardine, or Bishop Grosteste, or William de Edingdon, Bishop of Winchester and Chancellor of England,—among the common people?”

“They were not amongthem?” exclaimed Philippa in contemptuous surprise.

“Trust me, but they were,—two of them at least; and the third preached their doctrines, though he went not out from them.”

“I could not have believed it!”

“‘The wind bloweth where it listeth,’” said the Grey Lady, softly: but she hardly spoke to her visitor.

Philippa rose. “I thank you for your counsel,” she said.

“And you mean,notto follow it?” was the gentle response.

“I do not know what I mean to do,” she said honestly. “I want to do right; but I cannot believe it right to deny the grace of condignity. It is so blessed a doctrine! How else shall men merit the favour of God? And I do not perceive, by your view, how men approach God at all.”

“By God approaching them,” said the eremitess. “‘Whosoever will, let him take the Water of Life freely.’ But God provideth the water; man only receiveth it; and the will to receive it is of God, not of man’s own deed and effort. ‘It is God that worketh in us.’ Salvation is ‘not of works, lest any man should boast.’”

“That is not the doctrine of holy Church,” answered Philippa, somewhat offended.

“It is the doctrine of Saint Paul,” was the quiet rejoinder, “for the words I have just spoken are not mine, but his.”

“Are you certain of that, Mother?”

“Quite certain.”

“Who told you them?”

The Grey Lady turned, and took from a rough shelf or ledge, scooped out in the rocky wall of the little cavern, a small brown-covered volume.

“I know not if you can read,” she said, offering the book to Lady Sergeaux; “but there are the words.”

The little volume was no continuous Book of Scripture, but consisted of passages extracted almost at random, of varying lengths, apparently just as certain paragraphs had attracted her when she heard or read them.

“Yes, I can read. My nurse taught me,” said Philippa, taking the little book from her hand.

But her eyes lighted, the first thing, upon a passage which enchained them; and she read no further.

“Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again; but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.”

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