A Forgotten Hero Part 23

"Love her!" returned Heliet. "My dear husband, thou dost not know that man. He owes his life to her generosity, and he will never forgive her for it."

Note 1. Rot. Pat., 22 Edward the First.

Note 2. The language of this sentence is remarkable:--"Jeo ou nul autre en moun noun purchace absolucion _ou de Apostoile ou de autre souerein_." (Rot. Pat., 22 Edward the First.)

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

THE SUN BREAKS OUT.

"If from Thine ordeal's heated bars, Our feet are seamed with crimson scars, Thy will be done!"--Whittier.

Heliet's penetration had not deceived her. The mean, narrow, withered article which Vivian Barkeworth called his soul, was unable to pardon Clarice for having shown herself morally so much his superior. That his wife should be better than himself was in his eyes an inversion of the proper order of things. And as of course it was impossible that he should be to blame, why, it must be her fault Clarice found herself most cruelly snubbed for days after her interference in behalf of her graceless husband. Not in public; for except in the one instance of this examination, where his sense of shame and guilt had overcome him for a moment, Vivian's company manners were faultless, and a surface observer would have p.r.o.nounced him a model husband. Poor Clarice had learned by experience that any restraint which Vivian put upon himself when inwardly vexed, was sure to rebound on her devoted head in the form of after suffering in private.

To Clarice herself the reaction came soon and severely. On the evening before Rosie's funeral, Heliet found her seated by the little bier in the hall, gazing dreamily on the face of her lost darling, with dry eyes and strained expression. She sat down beside her. Clarice took no notice. Heliet scarcely knew how to deal with her. If something could be said which would set the tears flowing it might save her great suffering; yet to say the wrong thing might do more harm than good. The supper-bell rang before she had made up her mind. As they rose Clarice slipped her hand into Heliet's arm, and, to the surprise of the latter, thanked her.

"For what?" said Heliet.

"For the only thing any one can do for me--for feeling with me."

After supper Clarice went up to her own rooms; but Heliet returned to the hall where Rosie lay. To her astonishment, she found a sudden and touching change in the surroundings of the dead child. Rosie lay now wreathed round in white rosebuds, tastefully disposed, as by a hand which had grudged neither love nor labour.

"Who has done this?" Heliet spoke aloud in he surprise.

"I have," said a voice beside her. It was no voice which Heliet knew.

She looked up into the face of a tall man, with dark hair and beard, and eyes which were at once sad and compa.s.sionate.

"You! Who are you?" asked Heliet in the same tone.

"You may not know my name. I am--Piers Ingham."

"Then I do know," replied Heliet, gravely. "But, Sir Piers, _she_ must not know."

"Certainly not," he said, quietly. "Tell her nothing; let her think, if she will, that the angels did it. And--tell me nothing. Farewell."

He stooped down and kissed the cold white brow of the dead child.

"That can hurt no one," said Piers, in a low voice. "And she may be glad to hear it--when she meets the child again."

He glided out of the hall so softly that Heliet did not hear him go, and only looked up and found herself alone. She knelt for a few minutes by the bier and then went quietly to her own room.

The next morning there were abundance of conjectures as to who could have paid this tender and graceful tribute. The Earl was generally suspected, but he at once said that it was no doing of his. Everybody was asked, and all denied it. Father Bevis was appealed to, as being better acquainted with the saints than the rest of the company, to state whether he thought it probable that one of them had been the agent. But Father Bevis's strong common sense declined to credit any but human hands with the deed.

Clarice was one of the last to appear. And when the sweet, fair tribute to her darling broke suddenly upon her sight, the result was attained for which all had been more or less hoping. That touch of nature set the floodgates open, and dropping on her knees beside the bier, Clarice poured forth a rain of pa.s.sionate tears.

When all was over, and Rosie had been hidden away from sight until the angel-trump should call her, Clarice and Heliet went out together on the Castle green. They sat down on one of the seats in an embrasure. The Earl, with his thoughtful kindness, seeing them, sent word to the commandant to keep the soldiers within so long as the ladies chose to stay there. So they were left undisturbed.

Heliet was longing intensely to comfort Clarice, but she felt entirely at a loss what line to take. Clarice relieved her perplexity by being the first to speak.

"Heliet!" she said, "what does G.o.d mean by this?"

"I cannot tell, dear heart, except that He means love and mercy. 'All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth unto the lovers of His will and testimony.' Is not that enough?"

"It might be if one could see it."

"Is it not enough, without seeing?"

"O Heliet, Heliet, she was all I had!"

"I know it, beloved. But how if He would have thee to make Him all thou hast?"

"Could I not have loved G.o.d and have had Rosie?"

"Perhaps not," said Heliet, gently.

"I hope He will take me soon," said Clarice. "Surely He can never leave me long now!"

"Or, it may be, make thee content to wait His will."

Clarice shook her head, not so much with a negative air as with a shrinking one. Just in that first agony, to be content with it seemed beyond human nature.

Heliet laid her hand on that of her friend. "Dear, would you have had Rosie suffer as you have done?"

For a moment Clarice's mental eyes ran forward, over what would most likely, according to human prevision, have been the course of Rosie's after life. The thought came to her as with a pang, and grew upon her, that the future could have had no easy lot in store for Vivian Barkeworth's daughter. He would have disposed of her without a thought of her own wish, and no prayers nor tears from her would have availed to turn him from his purpose. No--it was well with the child.

"Thou art right," she said, in a pained voice. "It is better for Rosie as it is. But for me?"

"Leave that with G.o.d. He will show thee some day that it was better for thee too."

Clarice rose from her seat; but not till she had said the one thing which Heliet had been hoping that she would not say.

"Who could have laid those flowers there? Heliet, canst thou form any idea? Dost thou think it _was_ an angel?"

Heliet had an excuse in settling her crutches for delaying her reply for a moment. Then she said in a low tone, the source of whose tenderness it was well that Clarice could not guess--"I am not sure, dear, that it was not."

If Clarice's sufferings had been pa.s.sive before, they began to be active now. Vivian made her life a torment to her by jealousy on the one hand, and positive cruelty on the other; yet his manners in public were so carefully veiled in courtesy that not one of her friends guessed how much she really suffered. As much time as she could she spent in her oratory, which was the only place where Vivian left her at peace, under a vague idea that it would bring him ill luck to interrupt any one's prayers. Unfortunately for Clarice, he had caught a glimpse of Piers, and, having no conscientiousness in his own composition, he could not imagine it in that of another. That Piers should be at Berkhamsted without at least making an effort to open communication with Clarice, was an idea which Vivian would have refused to entertain for a moment.

For what other earthly purpose could he be there? Vivian was a man who had no faith in any human being. In his belief, the only possible means to prevent Clarice from running away with Piers was to keep her either in his sight or locked up when out of it. The idea of trusting to her principles would have struck him as simply ridiculous.

Sir Piers, however, had completely disappeared, as completely as though he had never been seen. And after a while Vivian grew more confident, and not so particular about keeping the key turned. Clarice knew neither why he locked her in, nor why he gave over doing so. Had she had a suspicion of the reason, her indignation would not have been small.

Public affairs meanwhile maintained their interest. The King marched his army to Scotland, and routed Wallace's troops in the battle of Falkirk; but his success was somewhat counterbalanced by the burning of Westminster Palace and Abbey before he left home. It was about this time that Piers Gavestone began to appear at Court, introduced by his father with a view to making his fortune; and to the misfortune of the young Prince Edward, their musical tastes being alike, they became fast friends. The Prince was now only fourteen years of age; and, led by Gavestone, he was guilty--if indeed the charge be true--of a mischievous boyish frolic, in "breaking the parks" of the Bishop of Chester, and appropriating his deer. The boy was fond of venison, and he was still more fond of pets; but neither of these facts excused the raid on the Bishop of Chester, who chose to take the offence far more seriously than any modern bishop would be likely to do, and carried his complaint to the King. The royal father, as his wont was, flew into a pa.s.sion, and weighted the boys' frolic with the heavy penalty of banishment for Gavestone, and imprisonment for the Prince. In all probability young Edward had never looked on his action in any other light than as a piece of fun. Had his father been concerned about the sin committed against G.o.d--exactly the sin of a boy who robs an orchard--he might, with less outward severity, have produced a far more wholesome impression on his son; but what he considered appears to have been merely the dignity of the Prince, which was outraged by the act of the boy who bore the t.i.tle.

A quiet, grave exhortation might have done him good, but imprisonment did none, and left on many minds the impression that the boy had been hardly used.

One striking feature in the conduct of Edward the Second is the remarkable meekness and submission with which he bore his father's angry outbursts and severe punishments--often administered for mere youthful follies, such as most fathers would think amply punished by a strong lecture, and perhaps a few strokes of the cane. Edward the First seems to have been one of those men who entirely forget their own childhood, and are never able in after life to enter into the feelings of a child.