MORA DE NORELLE
Symon, Bishop of Worcester, chid himself for restlessness. Surely for
once his mind had lost control of his limbs.
No sooner did he decide to walk the smooth lawns around the Castle,
than he found himself mounting to the battlements; and now, though he
had installed himself for greatly needed repose in a deep seat in the
hall chamber, yet here he was, pacing the floor, or moving from one
window to another.
By dint of hard riding he had reached Warwick while the sun, though
already dipped beneath the horizon, still flecked the sky with rosy
clouds, and spread a golden mantle over the west.
The lord of the Castle was away, in attendance on the King; but all was
in readiness for the arrival of the Bishop, and great preparations had
been made for the reception of Sir Hugh d'Argent. His people, having
left Worcester early that morning, were about in the courtyard, as the
Bishop rode in.
As he passed through the doorway, an elderly woman, buxom, comely, and
of motherly aspect, whom he easily divined to be the tire-woman of whom
the Knight had spoken, came forward to meet him.
"Good my lord," she said, her eagerness allowing of scant ceremony,
"comes Sir Hugh d'Argent hither this night?"
"Aye," replied the Bishop, looking with kindly eyes upon Mora's old
nurse. "Within two hours, he should be here."
"Comes he alone, my lord?" asked Mistress Deborah.
"Nay," replied the Bishop, "the Countess of Norelle, a very noble lady
to whom the Knight is betrothed, rides hither with him."
"The saints be praised!" exclaimed the old woman, and turned away to
hide her tears.
Whilst his body-servant prepared a bath and laid out his robes, the
Bishop mounted to the ramparts and watched the gold fade in the west.
He glanced at the river below, threading its way through the pasture
land; at the billowy masses of trees; at the gay parterre, bright with
summer flowers. Then he looked long in the direction of the city from
which he had come.
During his strenuous ride, the slow tramp of the men-at-arms, had
sounded continually in his ears; the outline of that helpless figure,
lying at full length upon the stretcher, had been ever before his eyes.
He could not picture the arrival at the hostel, the removal of the
covering, the uprising of the Prioress to face life anew, enfolded in
the arms of her lover.
As in a weary dream, in which the mind can make no headway, but returns
again and yet again to the point of distress, so, during the entire
ride, the Bishop had followed that stretcher through the streets of
Worcester city, until it seemed to him as if, before the pall was
lifted, the long-limbed, graceful form beneath it would have stiffened
in death.
"A corpse for a bride! A corpse for a bride!" the hoofs of the black
mare Shulamite had seemed to beat out upon the road. "Alas, poor
Knight! A corpse for a bride!"
The Bishop came down from the battlements.
When he left his chamber an hour later, he had donned those crimson
robes which he wore on the evening when the Knight supped with him at
the Palace.
As he paced up and down the lawns, the gold cross at his breast gleamed
in the evening light.
A night-hawk, flying high overhead and looking downward as it flew,
might have supposed that a great scarlet poppy had left its clump in
the flower-beds, and was promenading on the turf.
A steward came out to ask when it would please the Lord Bishop to sup.
To the hovering hawk, a blackbird seemed to have hopped out,
confronting and arresting the promenading poppy.
The Bishop said he would await the arrival of Sir Hugh; but he turned
and followed the man into the Castle.
And now he sat in the great hall chamber.
Two hours had passed since his arrival.
Unless something unforeseen had occurred the Knight's cavalcade must be
here before long. He had planned to start within the hour; and, though
the Bishop had ridden fast, they could scarcely have taken more than an
hour longer to do the distance.
But supposing the Prioress had faltered at the last, and had besought
to be returned to the Nunnery? Would the chivalry of the Knight have
stood such a test? And, having left in secret, how could she return
openly? Would the way through the crypt be possible?
The Bishop began to wish that he had ridden to the Star hostel and
awaited developments there, instead of hastening on before.
The hall chamber was in the centre of the Castle. Its casements looked
out upon the gardens. Thus it came about that he did not hear a
cavalcade ride into the courtyard. He did not hear the shouting of the
men, the ring of hoofs on the paving stones, the champing of horses.
He sat in a great carved chair beside the fireplace in the hall
chamber, forcing himself to stillness, yet tormented by anxiety; half
minded to order a fresh horse and to ride back to Worcester.
Suddenly, without any warning, the door, leading from the ante-chamber
at the further end of the hall, opened.
Framed in the doorway appeared a vision, which for a moment led Symon
of Worcester to question whether he dreamed, so beautiful beyond belief
was the woman in a green riding-dress, looking at him with starry eyes,
her cheeks aglow, a veil of golden hair falling about her shoulders.
_Oh, Mora, child of delight! Has the exquisite promise of thy girlhood
indeed fulfilled itself thus? Have the years changed thee so
little---and yet so greatly?_
_"The captive exile hasteneth"; exile, long ago, for thy sake; seeking
to be free, yet captive still, caught once and forever in the meshes of
that golden hair._
_Oh, Mora, child of delight! Must all this planning for thy full
development and perfecting of joy, involve the poignant anguish of thus
seeing thee again?_
Symon of Worcester rose and stood, a noble figure in crimson and gold,
at the top of the hall. But for the silver moonlight of his hair, he
might have been a man in his prime--so erect was his carriage, so keen
and bright were his eyes.
The tall woman in the doorway gave a little cry; then moved quickly
forward.
"You?" she said. "You! The priest who is to wed us? You!"
He stood his ground, awaiting her approach.
"Yes, I," he said; "I."
Half-way across the hall, she paused.
"No," she said, as if to herself. "I dream. It is not Father
Gervaise. It is the Bishop."
She drew nearer.
Earnestly he looked upon her, striving to see in her the Prioress of
Whytstone--the friend of all these happy, peaceful, blessèd years.
But the Prioress had vanished.
Mora de Norelle stood before him, taller by half a head than he,
flushed by long galloping in the night breeze; nerves strung to
breaking point; eyes bright with the great unrest of a headlong leap
into a new world. Yet the firm sweet lips were there, unchanged; and,
even as he marked them, they quivered and parted.
"Reverend Father," she said, "I have chosen, even as you prayed I might
do, the harder part." She flung aside the riding-whip she carried; and
folding her hands, held them up before him. "For Christ's sake, my
Lord Bishop, pray for me!"
He took those folded hands in his, gently parted them, and held them
against the cross upon his heart.
"You have chosen rightly, my child," he said; "we will pray that grace
and strength may be vouchsafed you, so that you may continue, without
faltering, along the pathway of this fresh vocation."
She looked at him with searching gaze. The kind and gentle eyes of the
Bishop met hers without wavering; also without any trace of the
fire--the keen brightness--which had startled her as she stood in the
doorway.
"Reverend Father," she said, and there was a strange note of bewildered
question in her voice: "I pray you, tell me what you bid penitents to
remember as they kneel in prayer before the crucifix?"
The Bishop looked full into those starry grey eyes bent upon him, and
his own did not falter. His mild voice took on a shade of sternness as
befitted the solemn subject of her question.
"I tell them, my daughter, to remember, the sacred Wounds that bled and
the Heart that broke for them."
She drew her hands from beneath his, and stepped back a pace.
"The Heart that broke?" she said. "That _broke_? Do hearts break?"
she cried. "Nay, rather, they turn to stone." She laughed wildly,
then caught her breath. The Knight had entered the hall.
With free, glad step, and head uplifted, Hugh d'Argent came to them,
where they stood.
"My Lord Bishop," he said, "you have been too good to us. I sent Mora
on alone that she might find you here, not telling her who was the
prelate who had so graciously offered to wed us, knowing how much it
would mean to her that it should be you, Reverend Father."
"Gladly am I here for that purpose, my son," replied the Bishop,
"having as you know, the leave and sanction of His Holiness for so
doing. Shall we proceed at once to the chapel, or do you plan first to
sup?"
"Nay, Father," said the Knight. "My betrothed has ridden far and needs
food first, and then a good night's rest. If it will not too much
delay your return to Worcester, I would pray you to wed us in the
morning."
Knowing how determined Hugh had been, in laying his plans, to be wed at
once on reaching Warwick, the Bishop looked up quickly, wishing to
understand what had wrought this change.
He saw on the Knight's face that look of radiant peace which the
Prioress had seen, when first the cloak was turned back in the crypt;
and the Bishop, having passed that way himself, knew that to Hugh had
come the revelation which comes but to the true, lover--the deepest of
all joys, that of putting himself on one side, and of thinking, first
and only, of the welfare of the belovèd.
And seeing this, the Bishop let go his fears, and in his heart thanked
God.
"It is well planned, Hugh," he said. "I am here until the morning."
At which the Knight turning, strode quickly to the door, and beckoned.
Then back he came, leading by the hand the buxom, motherly old dame,
seen on arrival by the Bishop. Who, when the Lady Mora saw, she gave a
cry, and ran to meet her.
"Debbie!" she cried, "Oh, Debbie! Let us go home!"
And with that the tension broke all on a sudden, and with her old
nurse's arms around her, she sobbed on the faithful bosom which had
been the refuge of her childhood's woes.
"There, my pretty!" said Deborah, as best she could for her own sobs.
"There, there! We are at home, now we are together. Come and see the
chamber in which we shall sleep, just as we slept long years ago, when
you were a babe, my dear."
So, with her old nurse's arms about her, she, who had come in so
proudly, went gently out in a soft mist of tears.
The Bishop turned away.
"Love never faileth," he murmured, half aloud.
Hugh turned with him, and laughed; but in his laughter there was no
vexation, no bitterness, no unrest. It was the happy laugh of a heart
aglow with a hope amounting to certainty.
"There were two of us the other night, my dear lord," he said; "but now
old Debbie has appeared, methinks there are three!"