ALAS, THE PITY OF IT!
At length the Prioress spoke.
"Alas," she said, "the pity of it! Ah, the cruel, _cruel_ pity of it!"
Her voice, so sweet and tender, yet so hopeless in the unquestioning
finality of its regret, struck cold upon the heart of the Knight.
"But, my belovèd, I have found thee," he said, and dropping upon one
knee at her feet, he put out his hands to cover both hers. But the
Prioress was too quick for him. She hid her hands beneath her
scapulary. The Knight's brown fingers closed on the lions' heads.
"Touch me not," said the Prioress.
The Knight flushed, darkly.
"You are mine," he said. "Mine to have and to keep. During these
wretched years we have schooled ourselves each to think of the other as
wedded. Now we know that neither has been faithless. I have found
thee, my belovèd, and I will not let thee go."
"Hugh," said the Prioress, "I _am_ wedded. You come too late. Saw you
not the sacred ring upon my hand? Know you not that every nun is the
bride of Christ?"
"You are mine!" said the Knight, fiercely; and he laid his great hand
upon her knee.
From beneath her scapulary, the Prioress drew the dagger.
"Before I went to the cloister door," she said, "I took this from its
hiding-place, and put it in my girdle. I guessed I had a man to deal
with; though, Heaven knows, I dreamed not it was thou! But I tell
thee, Hugh, if thou, or any man, attempt to lay defiling touch upon any
nun in this Priory--myself, or another--I strike, and I strike home.
This blade will be driven up to the hilt in the offender's heart."
The Knight rose to his feet, stepped to the window and leaned, with
folded arms, against the wall.
"Put back thy weapon," he said, sternly, "into its hiding-place. No
other man is here; yet, should another come, my sword would well
suffice to guard thine honour, and the honour of thy nuns."
She looked at his dark face, scornful in its pain; then went at once,
obedient, to the secret panel.
"Yes, Hugh," she said. "That much of trust indeed I owe thy love."
As she placed the dagger in the wall and closed the panel, something
fell from her, intangible, yet real.
For so long, she had had to command. Bowing, kneeling, hurrying women
flew to do her behests. Each vied with the others to magnify her
Office. Often, she felt lonely by reason of her dignity.
And now--a man's dark face frowned on her in scornful anger; a man's
stern voice flung back her elaborate threat with a short command, which
disarmed her, yet which she obeyed. Moreover, she found it strangely
sweet to obey. Behind the sternness, behind the scornful anger, there
throbbed a great love. In that love she trusted; but with that love
she had to deal, putting it from her with a finality which should be
beyond question.
Yet the "Prioress" fell from her, as she closed the panel. It was the
Woman and the Saint who moved over to the window and stood beside the
Knight, in the radiance of a golden sunset after storm.
There was about her, as she spoke, a wistful humbleness; and a patient
sadness, infinitely touching.
"Sir Hugh," she said, "my dear Knight, whom I ever found brave and
tender, and whom I now know to have been always loyal and true--there
is no need that I should add a word to your recital. The facts you
wrung from Alfrida--God grant forgiveness to that tormented heart--are
all true. Believing the messenger, not dreaming of doubting Eleanor,
my one thought was to hide from the world my broken heart, my shattered
pride. I hastened to offer to God the love and the life which had been
slighted by man. I confess this has since seemed to me but a poor
second-best to have brought to Him, Who indeed should have our very
best. But, daily kneeling at His Feet, I said: 'A broken and a
contrite heart, Lord, Thou wilt not despise.' My heart was 'broken,'
when I brought it here. It has been 'contrite' since. And well I
know, although so far from worthy, it has not been despised."
She lifted her eyes to the golden glory behind the battlements of
purple cloud.
"Our blessèd Lady interceded," she said, simply; "she, who understands
a woman's heart."
The Knight was breathing hard. The folded arms rose and fell, with the
heaving of his chest. But he kept his lips firm shut; though praying,
all the while, that our Lady might have, also, some understanding of
the heart of a man!
"I think it right that you should know, dear Hugh," went on the sad
voice, gently; "that, at first, I suffered greatly. I spent long
agonizing nights, kneeling before our Lady's shrine, imploring strength
to conquer the love and the longing which had become sin."
A stifled groan broke from the Knight.
The golden light shone in her steadfast eyes, and played about her
noble brow.
"And strength was given," she said, very low.
"Mora!" cried the Knight--She started. It was so long since she had
heard her own name--"You prayed for strength to conquer, when you
thought it sin; just as I rode out to meet the foe, to fight and slay,
and afterward wrestled with unknown tongues, doing all those things
which were hardest, while striving to quench my love for you. But when
I knew that no other man had right to you or ever had had right, why
then I found that nothing had slain my love, nor ever could. And Mora,
now you know that I am free, is your love dead?"
She clasped her hands over the cross at her breast. His voice held a
deep passion of appeal; yet he strove, loyally, to keep it calm.
"Listen, Hugh," she said. "If, thinking me faithless, you had turned
for consolation to another; if, though you brought her but your second
best, you yet had won and wed her; now, finding after all that I had
not wedded Humphry, would you leave your bride, and try to wake again
your love for me?"
"You seek to place me," he said, "in straits in which, by mine own act,
I shall never be. Loving you as I love you, I could wed no other while
you live."
She paled, but persisted.
"But, _if_, Hugh? _If_?"
"Then, no," he said. "I should not leave one I had wed. But----"
"Hugh," she said, "thinking you faithless, I took the holy vows which
wedded me to Heaven. How can I leave my heavenly Bridegroom, for love
of any man upon this earth?"
"Not 'any man,'" he answered; "but your betrothed, returned to claim
you; the man to whom you said as parting words: 'Maid or wife, I am all
thine own; thine and none other's forever.' Ah, that brings the warm
blood to thy cheek! Oh, my Heart's Life, if it was true then, it is
true still! God is not a man that he should lie, or rob another of his
bride. If I had wed another woman, I should have done that thing,
honestly believing thee the wife of another man. But, all these years,
while thou and I were both deceived, He, Who knoweth all, has known the
truth. He knew thee betrothed to me. He heard thee say, upon the
battlements, when last we stood together: 'God knows, I am all thine
own.' He knew how, when I thought I had lost thee, I yet lived
faithful to the pure memory of our love. The day thy vows were made,
He knew that I was free, and thou, therefore, still pledged to me.
Shall a man rob God? Ay, he may. But shall God rob a man? Nay, then,
never!"
She trembled, wavered; then fled to the shrine of the Virgin, kneeling
with hands outstretched.
"Holy Mother of God," she sobbed, "teach him that I dare not do this
thing! Shew him that I cannot break my vows. Help him to understand
that I would not, if I could."
He followed, and kneeled beside her; his proud head bent; his voice
breaking with emotion.
"Blessèd Virgin," he said. "Thou who didst dwell in the earthly home
at Nazareth, help this woman of mine to understand, that if she break
her troth to me, holding herself from me, now when I am come to claim
her, she sends me forth to an empty life, to a hearth beside which no
woman will sit, to a home forever desolate."
Together they knelt, before the tender image of Mother and Child;
together, yet apart; he, loyally mindful not so much as to brush
against a fold of her veil.
The dark face, and the fair, were lifted, side by side, as they knelt
before the Madonna. For a while so motionless they kneeled, they might
have been finely-modelled figures; he, bronze; she, marble.
Then, with a sudden movement, she put out her right hand, and caught
his left.
Firmly his fingers closed over hers; but he drew no nearer.
Yet as they knelt thus with clasped hands, his pulsing life seemed to
flow through her, undoing, in one wild, sweet moment, the work of years
of fast and vigil.
"Ah, Hugh," she cried, suddenly, "spare me! Spare me! Tempt me not!"
Loosing her hand from his, she clasped both upon her breast.
The Knight rose, and stood beside her.
"Mora," he said, and his voice held a new tone, a tone of sadness and
solemnity; "far be it from me to tempt you. I will plead with you but
once again, in presence of our Lady and of the Holy Child; and, having
so done, I will say no more.
"I ask you to leave this place, which you would never have entered had
you known your lover was yours, and needing you. I ask you to keep
your plighted word to me, and to become my wife. If you refuse, I go,
returning not again. I leave you here, to kneel in peace, by night or
day, before the shrine of the Madonna. But--I bid you to remember, day
and night, that because of this which you have done, there can be no
Madonna in my home. No woman will ever sit beside my hearth, holding a
little child upon her knees.
"You leave to me the crucifix--heart broken, love betrayed; feet and
hands nailed to the wood of cruel circumstance; side pierced by spear
of treachery--lonely, forsaken. But you take from me all the best,
both in life and in religion; all that tells of love, of joy, of hope
for the years to come.
"Oh, my belovèd, weigh it well! There are so many, with a true
vocation, serving Heaven in Convent and in Cloister. There is but one
woman in the whole world for me. In the sight of Heaven, nothing
divides us. Convent walls now stand between--but they were built by
man, not God. Vows of celibacy were not meant to sunder loving hearts.
Mora? . . . Come!"
The Prioress rose and faced him.
"I cannot come," she said. "That which I have taught to others, I must
myself perform. Hugh, I am dead to the world; and if I be dead to the
world, how can I live to you? Had I, in very deed, died and been
entombed, you would not have gone down into the vaults and forced my
resting-place, that you might look upon my face, clasp my cold hand,
and pour into deaf ears a tale of love. Yet that is what, by trick and
artifice, you now have done. You come to a dead woman, saying; 'Love
me, and be my wife.' She must, perforce, make answer: 'How shall I,
who am dead to the world, live any longer therein?' Take a wife from
among the Living, Hugh. Come not to seek a bride among the Dead."
"Mother of God!" exclaimed the Knight, "is this religion?"
He turned to the window, then to the door. "How can I go from here?"
The stifled horror in his voice chilled the very soul of the woman to
whom he spoke. She had, indeed at last made him to understand.
"I must get you hence unseen," she said. "I dare not pass you out by
the Convent gate. I fear me, you must go back the way you came; nor
can you go alone. We hold the key to unlock the door leading from our
passage into the Cathedral crypt. I will now send all the nuns to the
Refectory. Then I myself must take you to the crypt."
"Can I not walk alone," asked the Knight, brusquely; "returning you the
key by messenger?"
"Nay," said the Prioress, "I dare run no risks. So quickly rumours are
afloat. To-morrow, this strange hour must be a dream; and you and I
alone, the dreamers. Now, while I go and make safe the way, put you on
again the robe and hood. When I return and beckon, follow silently."
The Prioress passed out, closing the door behind her.