A Forgotten Hero Part 15

And so the scene closed. Neither had understood the other, so far, at least, as spiritual matters were concerned. But in respect to the secular question Dame La Theyn could enter into Clarice's thoughts more than she chose to allow. The dialogue stirred within her faint memories--not quite dead--of that earlier time when her tears had flowed for the like cause, and when she had felt absolutely certain that she could never be happy again. But her love had been of a selfish and surface kind, and the wound, never more than skin-deep, had healed rapidly and left no scar. Was it surprising if she took it for granted that her daughter's was of the same cla.s.s, and would heal with equal rapidity and completeness? Beside this, she thought it very unwise policy to let Clarice perceive that she did understand her in any wise.

It would encourage her in her folly, Dame La Theyn considered, if she supposed that so wise a person as her mother could have any sympathy with such notions. So she wrapped herself complacently in her mantle of wisdom, and never perceived that she was severing the last strand of the rope which bound her child's heart to her own.

"O, purblind race of miserable men!"

How strangely we all spend our lives in the anxious labour of straining out gnats, while we scarcely detect the moment when we swallow the camel!

A long private conversation between Clarice's parents resulted the next day in Sir Gilbert taking her in hand. His comprehension was even less than her mother's, though it lay in a different direction.

"Well, Clarice, my dame tells me thou art not altogether well pleased with thy wedding. What didst thou wish otherwise, la.s.s?"

"The man," said Clarice, shortly enough.

"What, is not one man as good as another?" demanded her father.

"Not to me, Sir," said his daughter.

"I am afeared, Clarice, thou hast some romantic notions. They are all very pretty to play with, but they don't do for this world, child. Thou hast better shake them out of thine head, and be content with thy lot."

"It is a bad world, I know," replied Clarice. "But it is hard to be content, when life has been emptied and spoiled for one."

"Folly, child, folly!" said Sir Gilbert. "Thou mayest have as many silk gowns now as thou couldst have had with any other knight; and I dare be bound Sir Vivian should give thee a gold chain if thou wert pining for it. Should that content thee?"

"No, Sir."

Sir Gilbert was puzzled. A woman whose perfect happiness could not be secured by a gold chain was an enigma to him.

"Then what would content thee?" he asked.

"What I can never have now," answered Clarice. "It may be, as time goes on, that G.o.d will make me content without it--content with His will, and no more. But I doubt if even He could do that just yet. The wisest physician living cannot heal a wound in a minute. It must have its time."

Sir Gilbert tried to puzzle his way through this speech.

"Well, child, I do not see what I can do for thee."

"I thank you for wis.h.i.+ng it, fair Sir. No, you can do nothing. No one can do anything for me, except let me alone, and pray to G.o.d to heal the wound."

"Well, la.s.s, I can do that," said her father, brightening. "I will say the rosary all over for thee once in the week, and give a candle to our Lady. Will that do thee a bit of good, eh?"

Clarice had an instinctive feeling, that while the rosary and the candle might be a doubtful good, the rough tenderness of her father was a positive one. Little as Sir Gilbert could enter into her ideas, his affection was truer and more unselfish than that of her mother. Neither of them was very deeply attached to her; but Sir Gilbert's love could have borne the harder strain of the two. Clarice began to recognise the fact with touched surprise.

"Fair Sir, I shall be very thankful for your prayers. It will do me good to be loved--so far as anything can do it."

Sir Gilbert was also discovering, with a little astonishment himself, that his only child lay nearer to his heart than he had supposed. His heart was a plant which had never received much cultivation, either from himself or any other; and love, even in faint throbs, was a rather strange sensation. It made him feel as if something were the matter with him, and he could not exactly tell what. He patted Clarice's shoulder, and smoothed down her hair.

"Well, well, child! I hope all things will settle comfortably by and by. But if they should not, and in especial if thy knight were ever unkindly toward thee--which G.o.d avert!--do not forget that thou hast a friend in thine old father. Maybe he has not shown thee over much kindliness neither, but I reckon, my la.s.s, if it came to a pull, there'd be a bit to pull at."

Neither Sir Gilbert nor Dame Maisenta ever fully realised the result of that visit. It found Clarice indifferent to both, but ready to reach out a hand to either who would clasp it with any appearance of tenderness and compa.s.sion. It left her with a heart closed for ever to her mother, but for ever open to her father.

Note 1. This mediaeval term for the world had its rise in the notion that earth stood midway between Heaven and h.e.l.l, the one being as far below as the other was above.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

THE SHADOW OF THE FUTURE.

In His name was struck the blow That hath laid thy old life low In a garb of blood-red woe.

A very eventful year was 1291 in England and over all the civilised world. It was the end of the Crusades, the Turks driving the Christians from Acre, the last place which they held in Palestine. It opened with the submission of the Scottish succession to the arbitrament of Edward the First, and it closed with the funeral of his mother, Queen Eleonore of Provence--a woman whom England was not able to thank for one good deed during her long and stormy reign. She had been a youthful beauty, she wrote poetry, and she had never scandalised the nation by any impropriety of womanly conduct. But these three statements close the list of her virtues. She was equally grasping, unscrupulous, and extravagant. In her old age she retired to the Convent of Amesbury, where her two granddaughters, Mary of England, and Alianora of Bretagne, were nuns already, for the desirable purpose of "making her salvation."

Perhaps she thought she had made it when the summons came to her in the autumn of 1291. No voice had whispered to her, all through her long life of nearly eighty years, that if that ever were to be--

"Jesus Christ has done it all Long, long ago."

Matters had settled down quietly enough in Whitehall Palace. Sir Fulk de Chaucombe and Diana had been promoted to the royal household--the former as attendant upon the King, the latter as Lady of the Bedchamber to his eldest daughter, the Princess Alianora, who, though twenty-seven years of age, was still unmarried. It was a cause of some surprise in her household that the Countess of Cornwall did not fill up the vacancy created among her maidens by the marriages of Clarice and Diana. But when December came it was evident that before she did so she meant to make the vacancy still more complete.

One dark afternoon in that cheerful month, the Lady Margaret marched into the bower, where her female attendants usually sat when not engaged in more active waiting upon her. It was Sat.u.r.day.

"Olympias Trusbut, Roisia de Levinton," she said in her harsh voice, which did not sound unlike the rasping of a file, "ye are to be wed on Monday morning."

Olympias showed slight signs of going into hysterics, which being observed by the Lady Margaret, she calmly desired Felicia to fetch a jug of water. On this hint of what was likely to happen to her if she imprudently screamed or fainted, Olympias managed to recover.

"Ye are to wed the two squires," observed their imperious mistress. "I gave the choice to Reginald de Echingham, and he fixed on thee, Olympias."

Olympias pa.s.sed from terror to ecstasy.

"Thou, Roisia, art to wed Ademar de Gernet. I will give both of you your gear."

And away walked the Countess.

"I wish she would have let me alone," said Roisia, in doleful accents.

"Too much to hope for," responded Felicia.

"Dost thou not like De Gernet?" asked Clarice, sympathisingly.

"Oh, I don't dislike him," said Roisia; "but I am not so fond of him as that comes to."

An hour or two later, however, Mistress Underdone appeared, in a state of flurry by no means her normal one.

"Well, here is a pretty tale," said she. "Not for thee, Olympias; matters be running smooth for thee, though the Lord Earl did say," added she, laughing, "that incense was as breath of life to Narcissus, and he would needs choose the maid that should burn plenty on his altar. But-- the thing is fair unheard of!--Ademar de Gernet refuses to wed under direction from the Lady."

"Why?" asked Roisia, looking rather insulted.

"Oh, it has nought to do with thee, child," said Mistress Underdone.

"Quoth he that he desired all happiness to thee, and pardon of thee for thus dealing; but having given his heart to another of the Lady's damsels, he would not wed with any but her."

"Why, that must be Felicia," said the other three together.