A Forgotten Hero Part 26

He pleaded hard for a private interview with the Countess, but the reigning Abbess of Romsey was a great stickler for rule, and she decided that it was against precedent, and therefore propriety, that one of her nuns should be thus singled out from the rest. The announcement must be made in the usual way, to the whole convent, at vespers.

So, in the well-known tones of the Prior of Ashridge,--some time the Earl's confessor, and his frequent visitor,--with the customary request to pray for the repose of the dead, to the ears of Mother Margaret, as she knelt in her stall with the rest, came the sound of the familiar name of Edmund, Earl of Cornwall.

Very tender and pathetic was the tone in which the intimation was given.

The heart of the Prior himself was so wrung that he could not imagine such a feeling as indifference in that of the woman who had been the dearest thing earth held for that dead man. But if he looked down the long row of black, silent figures for any sign or sound, he looked in vain. There was not even a trembling of Mother Margaret's black veil as her voice rose untroubled in the response with all the rest--

"_O Jesu dulcis! O Jesu pie!

O Jesu, Fili Maria!

Dona eis requiem_."

In the recreation-time which followed, the Prior sought out Mother Margaret. He found her without difficulty, seated on a form at the side of the room, talking to a sister nun, and he caught a few words of the conversation as he approached.

"I a.s.sure thee, Sister Regina, it is quite a mistake. Mother Wymarca told me distinctly that the holy Mother gave Sister Maud an unpatched habit, and it is all nonsense in her to say there was a patch on the elbow."

The Prior bit his lips, but he restrained himself, and sat down, reverently saluted by both nuns as he did so. Was she trying to hide her feelings? thought he.

"Sister Margaret, I brought you tidings," he said, as calmly as was in him.

The nun turned upon him a pair of cold, steel-blue eyes, as calm and irresponsive as if he had brought her no tidings whatever.

"I heard them, Father, if it please you. Has he left any will?"

The priest-nature in the Prior compelled him officially to avoid any reprehension of this perfect monastic calm; but the human nature, which in his case lay beneath it, was surprised and repelled.

"He has left a will, wherein you are fully provided for."

"Oh, that is nice!" said Mother Margaret, in tones of unquestionable gratulation. "And how much am I to have? Of course I care about it only for the sake of the Abbey."

The Prior had his private ideas on that point; for, as he well knew, the vow of poverty was somewhat of a formality in the Middle Ages, since the nun who brought to her convent a t.i.tle and a fortune was usually not treated in the same manner as a penniless commoner.

"The customary dower to a widow, Sister."

"Do you mean to say I am only to have my third? Well, I call that shameful! And so fond of me as he always professed to be! I thought he would have left me everything."

The Prior experienced a curious sensation in his right arm, which, had Mother Margaret not been a woman, or had he been less of a Christian and a Church dignitary, might have resulted in the measuring of her length on the floor of the recreation-room. But she was totally unconscious of any such feeling on his part. Her heart--or that within her which did duty for one--had been touched at last.

"Well, I do call it disgraceful!" she repeated.

"And is that all?" asked the Prior involuntarily, and not by any means in consonance with his duty as a holy priest addressing a veiled nun.

But priests and nuns have no business with hearts of any sort, and he ought to have known this as well as she did.

"All?" she said, with a rather puzzled look in the frosty blue eyes. "I would it had been a larger sum, Father; for the convent's sake, of course."

"And am I to hear no word of regret, Sister, for the man to whom you were all the world?"

This was, of course, a most shocking speech, considering the speaker and the person whom he addressed; but it came warm from that inconvenient heart which had no business to be beneath the Prior's ca.s.sock. Mother Margaret was scandalised, and she showed it in her face, which awoke her companion to the fact that he was not speaking in character. That a professed nun should be expected to feel personal and unspiritual interest in an extern! and, as if that were not enough, in a man!

Mother Margaret's sense of decorum was quite outraged.

"How could such thoughts trouble the blessed peace of a holy sister?"

she wished to know. "Pardon me, Father; I shall pray for his soul, of course. What could I do more?"

And the Prior recognised at last that to the one treasure of that dead man's heart, the news he brought was less than it had been to him.

He bit his lips severely. It was all he could do to keep from telling her that the pure, meek, self-abnegating soul which had pa.s.sed from earth demanded far fewer prayers than the cold, hard, selfish spirit which dwelt within her own black habit.

"It is I who require pardon, Sister," he said, in a constrained voice.

"May our Lord in His mercy forgive us all!"

He made no further attempt to converse with Mother Margaret. But, as he pa.s.sed her a few minutes later, he heard that she and Sister Regina had gone back to the previous subject, which they were discussing with some interest in their tones.

"O woman, woman!" groaned the Prior, in his heart; "the patch on Sister Maud's elbow is more to thee than all the love thou hast lost. Ah, my dear Lord! it is not you that I mourn. You are far better hence."

From which speech it will be seen that the Bonus h.o.m.o was very far from being a perfect monk.

The actions of Mother Margaret admirably matched her words. She gave herself heart and soul to the important business of securing her miserable third of her dead lord's lands and goods. Not till they were safe in her possession did she allow herself any rest.

Did the day ever come when her feelings changed? During the ten years which she outlived the man who had loved her with every fibre of his warm, great heart, did her heart ever turn regretfully, when Abbesses were harsh or life was miserable, to the thought of that tender, faithful love which, so far as in it lay, would have sheltered her life from every breath of discomfort? Did she ever in all those ten years whisper to herself--

"Oh, if he would but come again, I think I'd vex him so no more!"

Did she ever murmur such words as--

"I was not worthy of you, Douglas, Not half worthy the like of you!"

...words which, honestly sobbed forth in very truth, would have been far nearer real penitence than all the "acts of contrition" which pa.s.sed her lips day by day.

G.o.d knoweth. Men will never know. But all history and experience tend to a.s.sure us that women such as Margaret de Clare usually die as they have lived, and that of all barriers to penitence and conversion there is none so hard to overthrow as indulged malice and deliberate hardening of the heart against the love of G.o.d and man.

There was not, as Piers and Clarice had feared there might have been, any misfortune to them in the way of preventing their marriage. King Edward had great respect for justice and honour, and finding that his cousin had, though without legal formalities, granted Clarice's marriage to Piers, he confirmed the grant, and Father Bevis married them quietly in the chapel of Berkhamsted Castle, without any festivity or rejoicings, for the embalmed body of the master to whom they owed so much lay in state in the banquet-hall. It was a mournful ceremony, where--

"The cheers that had erst made the welkin ring Were drowned in the tears that were shed for the King."

Clarice and Piers made no attempt to obtain any further promotion. They retired to a little estate in Derbys.h.i.+re, which shortly afterwards fell to Piers, and there they spent their lives, in serving their generation according to the will of G.o.d, often brightened by visits from Ademar and Heliet, who had taken up their abode not far from them in the neighbouring county of Rutland. And as time went on, around Clarice grew up brave sons and fair daughters, to all of whom she made a very loving mother; but, perhaps, no one was ever quite so dear to her heart as the star which had gleamed on her life the brighter for the surrounding darkness, the little white rosebud which had been gathered for the garden of G.o.d.

"In other springs her life might be In bannered bloom unfurled; But never, never match her wee White Rose of all the world."

It was not until the spring which followed his death was blooming into green leaves and early flowers that the coffin of Edmund, Earl of Cornwall, was borne to the magnificent Abbey of Hales in Gloucesters.h.i.+re, founded by his father. There they laid him down by father and mother--the grand, generous, spendthrift Prince who had so nearly borne the proud t.i.tle of Caesar Augustus, and the fair, soft, characterless Princess who had been crowned with him as Queen of the Romans. For the Prince who was laid beside them that Easter afternoon, the world had prepared what it considers a splendid destiny. Throne and diadem, glory and wealth, love and happiness, were to have been his, so far as it lay in the world's power to give them; but on most of all these G.o.d had laid His hand, and forbidden them to come near the soul which He had marked for His own. For him there was to be an incorruptible crown, but no corruptible; the love of the Lord that bought him, but not the love of the woman on whom he set his heart.

Now--whatever he may have thought on earth--now, standing on the sea of gla.s.s, and having the harp of G.o.d, he knows which was the better portion.

He wore no crown; he founded no dynasty; he pa.s.sed away, like a name written in water, followed only by the personal love of a few hearts which were soon dust like him, and by the undying curses and calumnies of the Church which he had done his best to purify against her will.

But shall we, looking back across the six centuries which lie between us and him who brought Protestantism into England--shall we write on his gravestone in the ruined Abbey of Hales, "This man lived in vain?"

THE END.