"When the shore is won at last,
Who will count the billows past?"
Keble.
It was winter again; and the winds blew harshly and wailingly around the
Castle of Arundel. In the stateliest chamber of that Castle, where the
hangings were of cramoisie paned with cloth of gold, the evening tapers
were burning low, and a black-robed priest knelt beside the bed where an
old man lay dying.
"I can think of nothing more, Father," faintly whispered the penitent.
"I have confessed every sin that I have ever sinned, so far as my memory
serveth: and many men have been worse sinners than I. I never robbed a
church in all my wars. I have bequeathed rents and lands to the Priory
of God and Saint Pancras at Lewes, for two monks to celebrate day by day
masses of our Lady and of the Holy Ghost,--two hundred pounds; and for
matins and requiem masses in my chapel here, a thousand marks; and four
hundred marks to purchase rent lands for the poor; and all my debts I
have had a care to pay. Can I perform any other good work? Will that
do, Father?"
"Thou canst do nought else, my son," answered the priest. "Thou hast
right nobly purchased the favour of God, and thine own salvation. Thy
soul shall pass, white and pure, through the flames of Purgatory, to be
triumphantly acquitted at the bar of God."
And lifting his hands in blessing, he pronounced the unholy
incantation,--"_Absolvo te_!"
"Thank the saints, and our dear Lady!" feebly responded the dying man.
"I am clean and sinless."
Before the morrow dawned on the Conversion of Saint Paul, that old man
knew, as he had never known on earth, whether he stood clean and sinless
before God or not. There were no bands in that death. The river did
not look dark to him; it did not feel cold as his feet touched it. But
on the other side what angels met him? and what entrance was accorded,
to that sin-defiled and uncleansed soul, into that Land wherein there
shall in no wise enter anything that defileth?
And so Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, passed away.
Two months later,--by a scribe's letter, written in the name of her
half-brother, the young, brave, joyous man upon whose head the old
coronet had descended,--the news of the Earl's death reached Philippa
Sergeaux at Kilquyt. Very differently it affected her from the manner
in which she would have received it four years before. And very
differently from the manner in which it was received by the daughters of
Alianora, to whom (though they did not put it into audible words) the
real thought of the heart was--"Is the old man really gone at last?
Well, it was time he should. Now I shall receive the coronet he left to
me, and the two, or three, thousand marks." For thus he had remembered
Joan and Alesia; and thus they remembered him. To Mary he left nothing;
a sure sign of offence, but how incurred history remains silent. But to
the eldest daughter, whose name was equally unnamed with hers--whose
ears heard the news so far away--whose head had never known the fall of
his hand in blessing--whose cheek had never been touched by loving lips
of his--to Philippa Sergeaux the black serge for which she exchanged her
damask robes was real mourning.
She did not say now, "I can never forgive my father." It is not when we
are lying low in the dust before the feet of the Great King, oppressed
with the intolerable burden of our ten thousand talents, that we feel
disposed to rise and take our fellow-servant by the throat, with the
pitiless, "Pay me that thou owest." The offensive "Stand by,--I am
holier than thou!" falls only from unholy lips. When the woman that was
a sinner went out, washed and forgiven, from that sinless Presence, with
the shards of the broken alabaster box in her hand, she was less likely
than at any previous time in her life to reproach the fellow-sinners
whom she met on her journey home. So, when Philippa Sergeaux's eyes
were opened, and she came to see how much God had forgiven her, the
little that she had to forgive her father seemed less than nothing in
comparison. She could distinguish now, as previously she could not--but
as God does always--between the sin and the sinner; she was able to keep
her hatred and loathing for the first, and to regard the second with the
deepest pity. And when she thought of the sleep into which she could
have little doubt that his soul had been lulled,--of the black awakening
"on the brink of the pit,"--there was no room in her heart for any
feeling but that of unutterable anguish.
They had not sent for her to Arundel. Until she heard that the end was
reached, she never knew he was near the end at all.
It is not Christianity, but Pharisaism, which would shut up the kingdom
of heaven against all but itself. To those who have tasted that the
Lord is gracious, it is something more than mere privilege to summon him
that is athirst to come. "Necessity is upon them--yea, woe is unto them
if they preach not the gospel!" Though no Christian is a priest, every
Christian must be a preacher. Ay, and that whether he will or not. He
may impose silence upon his lips, but his life must be eloquent in spite
of himself. And what a terrible thought is this, when we look on our
poor, unworthy, miserable lives rendered unto the Lord, for all His
benefits toward us! When the world sees us vacillating between right
and wrong--questioning how near we may go to the edge of the precipice
and yet be safe--can it realise that we believe that right and wrong to
be a matter of life and death? Or when it hears us murmuring
continually over trifling vexations, can it believe that we honestly
think ourselves those to whom it is promised that all shall work for
good--that all things are ours--that we are heirs of God, and
joint-heirs with Christ?
O Lord, pardon the iniquities of our holy things! Verily, without Thee
we can do nothing.
On the morning that this news reached Kilquyt, an old man in the garb of
the Dominican Order was slowly mounting the ascent which led from the
Vale of Sempringham. The valley was just waking into spring life. In
the trees above his head the thrushes and chaffinches were singing; and
just before him, diminished to a mere speck in the boundless blue, a
lark poured forth his "flood of delirious music." The Dominican paused
and rested on his staff while he listened.
"Sing, happy birds!" he said, when at length the lark's song was over,
and the bird had come down to earth again. "For you there are no vain
regrets over yesterday, no woeful anticipations of to-morrow. But what
kind of song can _she_ sing when she hath heard the news I bring her?"
"Father Guy!" said a voice beside him.
It was a child of ten years old who stood in his path--a copy of Elaine
four years before.
"Ah, maid, art thou there?" answered Guy. "Run on, Annora, and say to
the Grey Lady that I will be at her cell in less than an hour. Thy feet
are swifter than mine."
Annora ran blithely forward. Guy of Ashridge pursued his weary road,
for he was manifestly very weary. At length he rather suddenly halted,
and sat down on a bank where primroses grew by the way-side.
"I can go no further without resting," said he. "Ten is one thing, and
threescore and ten is another. If I could turn back and go no
further!--Is the child here again already?"
"Father Guy," said Annora, running up and throwing herself down on the
primrose bank, "I have been to the cell, but I have not given your
message."
"Is the Lady not there?" asked Guy, a sudden feeling of relief coming
over him.
"Oh yes, she is there," replied the child; "but she was kneeling at
prayer, and I thought you would not have me disturb her."
"Right," answered the monk. "But lest she should leave the cell ere I
reach it, go back, Annora, and keep watch. Tell her, if she come forth,
that I must speak with her to-day."
Once more away fled the light-footed Annora, and Guy, rising, resumed
his journey.
"If it must be, it may as well be now," he said to himself, with a sigh.
So, plodding and resting by turns, he at length arrived at the door of
the cell. The door was closed, and the child sat on the step before it,
singing softly to herself, and playing with a lapful of wild flowers--
just as her sister had been doing when Philippa Sergeaux first made her
acquaintance.
"Is she come forth yet?" asked Guy.
Annora shook her flaxen curls. Guy went to the little window, and
glanced within. The grey figure was plainly visible, kneeling in
prayer, with the head bent low, and resting against a ledge of the rock
which formed the walls of the little dwelling. The monk sat down on a
piece of rock outside the cell, and soon so completely lost himself in
thought that Annora grew weary of her amusement before he spoke again.
She did not, however, leave him; but when she had thrown away her
flowers, and had spent some minutes in a vain search for a four-leaved
clover, fairly tired out, she came and stood before him.
"The shadow is nearly straight, Father Guy. Will she be much longer, do
you think?"
Guy started suddenly when Annora spoke.
"There is something amiss," he replied, in a tone of apprehension. "I
never knew her so long before. Has she heard my news already?"
He looked in again. The grey veiled figure had not changed its
position. After a moment's irresolution, Guy laid his hand upon the
latch. The monk and the child entered together,--Guy with a face of
resolute endurance, as though something which would cost him much pain
must nevertheless be done; Annora with one of innocent wonder, not
unmixed with awe.
Guy took one step forward, and stopped suddenly.
"O Father Guy!" said Annora in a whisper, "the Grey Lady is not
praying,--she is asleep."
"Yes, she is asleep," replied Guy in a constrained voice. "`So He
giveth His beloved sleep.' He knew how terribly the news would pain
her; and He would let none tell it to her but Himself. `I thank Thee, O
Father, Lord of Heaven and earth!'"
"But how strangely she sleeps!" cried Annora, still under her breath.
"How white she is! and she looks so cold! Father Guy, won't you awake
her? She is not having nice dreams, I am afraid."
"The angels must awake her," said Guy, solemnly. "Sweeter dreams than
hers could no man have; for far above, in the Holy Land, she seeth the
King's face. Child, this is not sleep--it is death."
Ay, in the attitude of prayer, her head pillowed in its last sleep on
that ledge of the rock, knelt all that was mortal of Isabel La
Despenser. With her had been no priest to absolve--save the High
Priest; no hand had smoothed her pathway to the grave but the Lord's own
hand, who had carried her so tenderly through the valley of the shadow
of death. Painlessly the dark river was forded, silently the
pearl-gates were thrown open; and now she stood within the veil, in the
innermost sanctuary of the Temple of God. The arras of her life,
wrought with such hard labour and bitter tears, was complete now. All
the strange chequerings of the pattern were made plain, the fair
proportions no longer hidden: the perfected work shone out in its
finished beauty, and she grudged neither the labour nor the tears now.
Guy of Ashridge could see this; but to Annora it was incomprehensible.
She had been told by her mother that the Grey Lady had passed a life of
much suffering before she came to Sempringham; for silent as she was
concerning the details of that life, Isabel had never tried to conceal
the fact that it had been one of suffering. And the child's childish
idea was the old notion of poetical justice--of the good being rewarded,
and the evil punished, openly and unmistakably, in this world; a state
of affairs frequently to be found in novels, but only now and then in
reality. Had some splendid litter been borne to the door of the little
cell, and had noblemen decked in velvet robes, shining with jewels, and
riding on richly caparisoned horses, told her that they were come to
make the Grey Lady a queen, Annora would have been fully satisfied. But
here the heavenly chariot was invisible, and had come noiselessly; the
white and glistering raiment of the angels had shone with no perceptible
lustre, had swept by with no audible sound. The child wept bitterly.
"What troubleth thee, Annora?" said Guy of Ashridge, laying his hand
gently upon her head.
"Oh!" sobbed Annora, "God hath given her nothing after all!"
"Hath He given her nothing?" responded Guy. "I would thou couldst ask
her, and see what she would answer."
"But I thought," said the child, vainly endeavouring to stop crying, "I
thought He had such beautiful things to give to people He loved. She
used to say so. But He gave her nothing beautiful--only this cell and
those grey garments. I thought He would have clad her in golden
baudekyn [see Note 1], and set gems in her hair, and given her a horse
to ride,--like the Lady de Chartreux had when she came to the Convent
last year to visit her daughter, Sister Egidia. Her fingers were all
sparkling with rings, and her gown had beautiful strings of pearl down
the front, with perry-work [see Note 2] at the wrists. Why did not God
give the Grey Lady such fair things as these? Was she not quite as good
as the Lady de Chartreux?"
"Because He loved her too well," said Guy softly. "He had better and
fairer things than such poor gauds for her. The Lady de Chartreux must
die one day, and leave all her pearls and perry-work behind her. But to
the Lady Isabel that here lieth dead, He gave length of days for ever
and ever; He gave her to drink of the Living Water, after which she
never thirsted any more."
"Oh, but I wish He would have given her something that I could see!"
sobbed Annora again.
"Little maid," said Guy, his hand again falling lightly on the little
flaxen head, "God grant that when thy few and evil days of this lower
life be over, thou mayest both see and share what He hath given her!"