A Forgotten Hero Part 12

"I shall retire," said Sir Piers, "from my Lord's household. I will not give thee the misery of meeting me day by day. Rather I will do what I can to help thee to forget me. It is the easier for me, since I have had to offend my Lady by declining the hand of Felicia de Fay, which she was pleased to offer me."

"The Lady offered Felicia to thee?"

Sir Piers bent his head in a.s.sent. Clarice felt as if she could have poisoned Felicia, and have given what a.r.s.enic remained over to the Lady Margaret.

"And are we never to meet again?" she asked, with an intonation of pa.s.sionate sorrow.

"That must depend on G.o.d's will," said Sir Piers, gravely.

Clarice covered her face with both hands, and the bitter tears trickled fast through her fingers.

"Oh, why is G.o.d's will so hard?" she cried. "Could He not have left us in peace? We had only each other."

"Hush, sweet heart! It is wrong to say that. And yet it is hardly possible not to think it."

"It is not possible!" sobbed Clarice. "Does not G.o.d know it is not possible?"

"I suppose He must," said Sir Piers, gloomily.

There was no comfort in the thought to either. There never is any to those who do not know G.o.d. And Piers was only feeling after Him, if haply he might find Him, and barely conscious even of that; while Clarice had not reached even that point. To both of them, in this very anguish, Christ was saying, "Come unto Me;" but their own cry of pain hindered them from hearing Him. It was not likely they should hear, just then, when the sunlight of life was being extinguished, and the music was dying to its close. But afterwards, in the silence and the darkness, when the sounds were hushed and the lights were out, and there was nothing that could be done but to endure, then the still, small voice might make itself heard, and the crushed hearts might sob out their answer.

So they parted. "They took but ane kiss, and tare themselves away," to meet when it was G.o.d's will, and not knowing on which side of the river of death that would be.

Half an hour had pa.s.sed since Sir Piers' step had died away on the terrace, and Clarice still sat where he had left her, in crushed and silent stillness. If this night could only be the end of it! If things had not to go on!

"Clarice," said a pitying voice; and a hand was laid upon her head as if in fatherly blessing.

Clarice was too stunned with pain to remember her courtly duties. She only looked up at Earl Edmund.

"Clarice, my poor child! I want thee to know that I did my best for thee."

"I humbly thank your Lords.h.i.+p," Clarice forced herself to say.

"And it may be, my child, though it seems hard to believe, that G.o.d is doing His best for thee too."

"Then what would His worst be?" came in a gush from Clarice.

"It might be that for which thou wouldst thank Him now."

The sorrowing girl was arrested in spite of herself, for the Earl spoke in that tone of quiet certainty which has more effect on an undecided mind than any words. She wondered how he knew, not realising that he knows "more than the ancients" who knows G.o.d and sorrow.

"My child," said the Earl again, "man's best and G.o.d's best are often very different things. In the eyes of Monseigneur Saint Jacob, the best thing would have been to spare his son from being cast into the pit and sold to the Ishmaelites. But G.o.d's best was to sell the boy into slavery, and to send him into a dungeon, and then to lift him up to the steps of the king's throne. When _then_ comes, Clarice, we shall be satisfied with what happened to us now."

"When will it come, my Lord?" asked Clarice, in a dreary tone.

"When it is best," replied the Earl quietly.

"Your Lords.h.i.+p speaks as if you knew!" said Clarice.

"G.o.d knows. And he who knows G.o.d may be sure of everything else."

"Is it so much to know G.o.d?"

"It is life. 'Without G.o.d' and 'Without hope' are convertible terms."

"My Lord," said Clarice, wondering much to hear a layman use language which it seemed to her was only fit for priests, "how may one know G.o.d?"

"Go and ask Him. How dost thou know any one? Is it not by converse and companions.h.i.+p?"

There was a silent pause till the Earl spoke again.

"Clarice," he said, "our Lord has a lesson to teach thee. It rests with thee to learn it well or ill. If thou choose to be idle and obstinate, and refuse to learn, thou mayst sit all day long on the form in disgrace, and only have the task perfect at last when thou art wearied out with thine own perverseness. But if thou take the book willingly, and apply thyself with heart and mind, the task will be soon over, and the teacher may give thee leave to go out into the suns.h.i.+ne."

"My Lord," said Clarice, "I do not know how to apply your words here.

How can I learn this task quickly?"

"Dost thou know, first, what the task is?"

"Truly, no."

"Then let a brother tell thee who has had it set to him. It is a hard lesson, Clarice, and one that an inattentive scholar can make yet harder if he will. It is, 'Not my will, but Thine, be done.'"

"I cannot! I cannot!" cried Clarice pa.s.sionately.

"Some scholars say that," replied the Earl gently, "until the evening shadows grow very long. They are the weariest of all when they reach home."

"My Lord, pardon me, but you cannot understand it!" Clarice stood up.

"I am young, and you--"

"I am over forty years," replied the Earl. "Ah, child, dost thou make that blunder?--dost thou think the child's sorrows worse than the man's?

I have known both, and I tell thee the one is not to be compared to the other. Young hearts are apt to think it, for grief is a thing new and strange to them. But if ever it become to thee as thy daily bread, thou wilt understand it better. It has been mine, Clarice, for eighteen years."

That was a year more than Clarice had been in the world. She looked up wonderingly into the saddened, dove-like Plantagenet eyes--those eyes characteristic of the House--so sweet in repose, so fiery in anger.

Clarice had but a dim idea what his sorrow was.

"My Lord," she said, half inquiringly, "methinks you never knew such a grief as mine?"

The smile which parted the Earl's lips was full of pity.

"Say rather, maiden, that thou never knewest one like mine. But G.o.d knows both, Clarice, and He pities both, and when His time comes He will comfort both. At the best time, child! Only let us acquaint ourselves with Him, for so only can we be at peace. And now, farewell. I had better go in and preach my sermon to myself."

Clarice was left alone again. She did not turn back to exactly the same train of thought. A new idea had been given her, which was to become the germ of a long train of others. She hardly put it into words, even to herself; but it was this--that G.o.d meant something. He was not sitting on the throne of the universe in placid indifference to her sorrows; neither was He a malevolent Being who delighted in interfering with the plans of His creatures simply to exhibit His own power. He was doing this--somehow--for her benefit. She saw neither the how nor the why; but He saw them, and He meant good to her. All the world was not limited to the Slough of Despond at her feet. There was blue sky above.

Very vaguely Clarice realised this. But it was sufficient to soften the rocky hardness which had been the worst element of her pain--to take away the blind chance against which her impotent wings had been beaten in vain efforts to escape from the dark cage. It was that contact with "the living will of a living person," which gives the human element to what would otherwise be hard, blind, pitiless fate.

Clarice rose, and looked up to the stars. No words came. The cry of her heart was, "O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me." But she was too ignorant to weave it into a prayer. When human hearts look up to G.o.d in wordless agony, the Intercessor translates the att.i.tude into the words of Heaven.

Sad or bright, there was no time for thought on the Tuesday morning.

The day was bitterly cold, for it was the 16th of January 1291, and a heavy h.o.a.r-frost silvered all the trees, and weighed down the bushes in the Palace garden. Diana, wrapped in her white furs, was the picture of health and merriment. Was it because she really had not enough heart to care, or because she was determined not to give herself a moment to consider? Clarice, white as the fur round her throat, pale and heavy-eyed, grave and silent, followed Diana into the Palace chapel.