A Forgotten Hero Part 11

"What is all this fuss about?" exclaimed her displeased mistress. "I never heard such ado about nothing."

Her displeasure, usually feared above all things, was nothing to Clarice in that terrible instant. She sobbed forth that she loved elsewhere-- she was already troth-plight.

"Nonsense!" said the Countess, sharply. "What business hadst thou with such foolery, unknown to me? All maidens are wed by orders from their superiors. Why shouldst thou be an exception?"

"Oh, have you no compa.s.sion?" cried poor Clarice, in her agony. "Lady, did you never love?"

All present were intently watching the face of the Countess, in the hope of seeing some sign of relenting. But when this question was asked, the stern lips grew more set and stern than ever, and something like fire flashed out of the usually cold blue-grey eyes.

"Who--I?" she exclaimed. "Thanks be to all the saints right verily, nay. I never had ado with any such disgraceful folly. From mine earliest years I have ever desired to be an holy sister, and never to see a man's face. Get up, girl; it is of no use to kneel to me. There was no kindness shown to me; my wishes were never considered; why should thine be? I was made to array myself for my bridal, to the very uprooting and destruction of all that I most loved and desired. Ah! if my Lord and father had lived, it would not have been so; he always encouraged my vocation. He said love was unhappy, and I thought it was scandalous. No, Clarice; I have no compa.s.sion upon lovers. There never ought to be any such thing. Let it be as I have said."

And away stalked the Countess, looking more grey, square, and angular than ever.

Note 1. De La Moor is the only chronicler in whose pages it is possible to recognise the Edward of the letter-book, in which all his letters are copied for the thirty-third year of his father's reign--1304-5.

Note 2. Barnes's Edward the Third. I must in honesty confess that I have taken the liberty of smoothing Dr Barnes's somewhat rugged translation.

Note 3. A carpet-knight was one whose heroism lay more in rhetorical visions addressed to his partner in the intervals of dancing than in hard blows given and taken in the field.

CHAPTER SIX.

DESTROYED BY THE HURRICANE.

"Our plans may be disjointed, But we may calmly rest: What G.o.d has once appointed Is better than our best."--Frances Ridley Havergal.

The Countess left Clarice prostrate on the ground, sobbing as if her heart would break--Olympias feebly trying to raise and soothe her, Roisia looking half-stunned, and Felicia palpably amused by the scene.

"Thou hadst better get up, child," said Diana, in a tone divided between constraint and pity. "It will do thee no good to lie there. We shall all have to put up with the same thing in our turn. I haven't got the man I should have chosen; but I suppose it won't matter a hundred years hence."

"I am not so sure of that," said Roisia, in a low voice.

"Oh, thou art disappointed, I know," said Diana. "I would hand Fulk over to thee with pleasure, if I could. I don't want him. But I suppose he will do as well as another, and I shall take care to be mistress. It is something to be married--to anybody."

"It is everything to be married to the right man," said Roisia; "but it is something very awful to be married to the wrong one."

"Oh, one soon gets over that," was Diana's answer. "So long as you can have your own way, I don't see that anything signifies much. I shall not admire myself in my wedding-dress any the less because my squire is not exactly the one I hoped it might be."

"Diana, I don't understand thee," responded Roisia. "What does it matter, I should say, having thine own way in little nothings so long as thou art not to have it in the one thing for which thou really carest?

Thou dost not mean to say that a velvet gown would console thee for breaking thy heart?"

"But I do," said Diana. "I must be a countess before I could wear velvet; and I would marry any man in the world who would make me a countess."

Mistress Underdone, who had lifted up Clarice, and was holding her in her arms, petting her into calmness as she would a baby, now thought fit to interpose.

"My maids," she said, "there are women who have lost their hearts, and there are women who were born without any. The former case has the more suffering, yet methinks the latter is really the more pitiable."

"Well, I think those people pitiable enough who let their hearts break their sleep and interfere with their appet.i.tes," replied Diana. "I have got over my disappointment already; and Clarice will be a simpleton if she do not."

"I expect Clarice and I will be simpletons," said Roisia, quietly.

"Please yourselves, and I will please myself," answered Diana. "Now, mistress, Clarice seems to have given over crying for a few seconds; may we see the gear?"

"Oh, I want Father Bevis!" sobbed Clarice, with a fresh gush of tears.

"Ay, my dove, thou wilt be the better of shriving," said Mistress Underdone, tenderly. "Sit thee down a moment, and I will see to Father Bevis. Wait awhile, Diana."

It was not many minutes before she came back with Father Bevis, who took Clarice into his oratory; and as it was a long while before she rejoined them, the others--Roisia excepted--had almost time to forget the scene they had witnessed, in the interest of turning over Diana's _trousseau_, and watching her try on hoods and mantles.

The interview with Father Bevis was unsatisfactory to Clarice. She wanted comfort, and he gave her none. Advice he was ready with in plenty; but comfort he could not give her, because he could not see why she wanted it. He was simply incapable of understanding her. He was very kind, and very anxious to comfort her, if he could only have told how to do it. But love--spiritual love excepted--was a stranger to his bosom. No one had ever loved him; he could not remember his parents; he had never had brother nor sister; and he had never made a friend. His heart was there, but it had never been warmed to life. Perhaps he came nearest to loving the Earl his master; but even this feeling awakened very faint pulsations. His capacity for loving human beings had been simply starved to death. Such a man as this, however anxious to be kind and helpful, of course could not enter in the least into the position of Clarice. He told her many very true things, if she had been capable of receiving them; he tried his very best to help her; but she felt through it all that they were barbarians to each other, and that Father Bevis regarded her as partially incomprehensible and wholly silly.

Father Bevis told Clarice that the chief end of man was to glorify G.o.d, and to enjoy Him for ever; that no love was worthy in comparison with His; that he who loved father and mother more than Christ was not worthy of Him. All very true, but the stunned brain and lacerated heart could not take it in. The drugs were pure and precious, but they were not the medicine for her complaint. She only felt a sensation of repulsion.

Clarice did not know that the Earl was doing his very best to rescue her. He insisted on Father Miles going to the Countess about it; nay, he even ventured an appeal to her himself, though it always cost him great pain to attempt a conversation with this beloved but irresponsive woman. But he took nothing by his motion. The Countess was as obstinate as she was absolute. If anything, the opposition to her will left her just a shade more determined. In vain her husband pleaded earnestly with her not to spoil two lives. Hers had been spoiled, she replied candidly: these ought not to be better off, nor should they be.

"Life has been spoiled for us both," said the Earl, sadly; "but I should have thought that a reason why we might have been tenderer to others."

"You are a fool!" said the Countess with a flash of angry scorn.

They were the first words she had spoken to him for eighteen years.

"Maybe, my Lady," was the gentle answer. "It would cost me less to be accounted a fool than it would to break a heart."

And he left her, feeling himself baffled and his endeavours useless, yet with a glow at his heart notwithstanding. His Margaret had spoken to him at last. That her words were angry, even abusive, was a consideration lost in the larger fact. Tears which did not fall welled up from the soft heart to the dove-like eyes, and he went out to the terrace to compose himself. "O Margaret, Margaret! if you could have loved me!" He never thought of blaming her--only of winning her as a dim hope of some happy future, to be realised when it was G.o.d's will.

He had never yet dared to look his cross in the face sufficiently to add, if it were G.o.d's will.

When the Monday came, which was to be the last day of Clarice's maiden life, it proved a busy, bustling day, with no time for thought until the evening. Clarice lived through it as best she might. Diana seemed to have put her disappointment completely behind her, and to be thoroughly consoled by the bustle and her _trousseau_.

One consideration never occurred to any of the parties concerned, which would be thought rather desirable in the nineteenth century. This was, that the respective bridegrooms should have any interview with their brides elect, or in the slightest degree endeavour to make themselves agreeable. They met at meals in the great hall, but they never exchanged a word. Clarice did not dare to lift her eyes, lest she should meet those either of Vivian or Piers. She kept them diligently fixed upon her trencher, with which she did little else than look at it.

The evening brought a lull in the excitement and busy labour. The Countess, attended by Felicia, had gone to the Palace on royal invitation. Clarice sat on the terrace, her eyes fixed on the river which she did not see, her hands lying listlessly in her lap. Though she had heard nothing, that unaccountable conviction of another presence, which comes to us all at times, seized upon her; and she looked up to see Piers Ingham.

The interview was long, and there is no need to add that it was painful.

The end came at last.

"Wilt thou forget me, Clarice?" softly asked Piers.

"I ought," was the answer, with a gush of tears, "if I can."

"I cannot," was the reply. "But one pain I can spare thee, my beloved.

The Lady means to retain thee in her service as damsel of the chamber."

[Note 1.]

If Clarice could have felt any lesser grief beside the one great one, she would have been sorry to hear that.