THE "SPLENDID KNIGHT"
On the steps of Warwick Castle stood the Knight and his bride.
Their eyes still lingered on the archway through which the noble figure
of Symon, Bishop of Worcester, mounted upon his black mare, Shulamite,
had just disappeared from view.
The marriage had taken place in the Castle chapel, half an hour before,
with an astonishing amount of pomp and ceremony. Priests and acolytes
had appeared from unexpected places. Madonna lilies, on graceful stem,
gleamed white in the shadows of the sacred place. Solemn music rose
and fell; the deep roll of the Gregorian chants, beginning with a low
hum as of giant bees in a vast field of clover; swelling, in
full-throated unison, a majestic volume of sound which rang against the
rafters, waking echoes in the clerestory; then rumbling back into
silence.
Standing beneath the sacred canopy, the bridal pair lifted their eyes
to the high altar and saw, amid a cloud of incense, the Bishop, in
gorgeous vestments, descending the steps and coming toward them.
To Mora, at the time, and afterwards in most thankful remembrance, the
wonder of that which followed lay in the fact that where she had
dreaded an inevitable sense of sacrilege in giving to another that
which had been already consecrated to God, the Bishop so worded the
service as to make her feel that she could still be spiritually the
bride of Christ, even while fulfilling her troth to Hugh; also that, in
accepting the call to this new Vocation, she was not falling from her
old estate, but rather rising above it.
As the words were spoken which made her a wife, it seemed as if the
Bishop gently wrapped her about with a fresh mantle of dignity--that
dignity which had fallen from her in those moments of humiliation when,
at Hugh's bidding she laid herself down upon the stretcher.
The Bishop voiced the Church with a pomp and power which could not be
withstood; and when, in obedience to his command Hugh grasped her right
hand with his right hand, and the Bishop laid his own on either side of
their clasped hands, and pronounced them man and wife, it seemed indeed
as if a Divine touch united them, as if a Divine voice ratified their
vows and sanctified their union.
Mora had never before seen the _man_ so completely merged in his high
office.
And, when all was over, even as he mounted Shulamite and rode away, he
rode out of the courtyard with the air of a Knight Templar riding
forth-to do battle in a Holy War.
It seemed to Mora that she had bidden farewell to her old friend of the
kindly smile, the merry eye, and the ready jest, in the early hours of
that morning, as together they left the arbour of the golden roses.
There remained therefore but one man to be considered: the "splendid
Knight" of old Antony's vision; the lover who had pursued her into her
Nunnery; wooed her in her own cell, unabashed by the dignity of her
office; mastered her will; forced her numbed heart to awaken, disturbed
by the thrill of an unwilling tenderness; moved her to passion by the
poignant anguish of a parting, which she regarded as inevitably final;
won the Bishop over, to his side, and, through him, the Pope; and
finally, by the persistence of his pleadings, moved our blessèd Lady to
vouchsafe a vision on his behalf.
This was the "splendid Knight" against whom the stars in their courses
had most certainly not fought. Principalities and powers had all been
for him; against him, just a woman and her conscience, and--he had won.
When, at their first interview in her cell, in reply to her demand:
"Why are you not with your wife?" he had answered: "I _am_ with my
wife; the only wife I have ever wanted, the only woman I shall ever
wed, is here"--she stood ready to strike with ivory and steel, at the
first attempt upon her inviolable chastity, and could afford to smile,
in pitying derision, at so empty a boast.
But now? If he said: "My wife is here," and chose to seize her with
possessive grasp, she must meekly fold her hands upon her breast, and
say: "Even so, my lord. I am yours. Deal with me as you will."
As the Bishop's purple cloak and the hind quarters of his noble black
mare, disappeared from view, the crowd which hitherto had surrounded
the bridal pair, also vanished, as if at the wave of a magic wand.
Thus for the first time, since those tense moments in the Cathedral
crypt, Mora found herself alone with Hugh.
She was not young enough to be embarrassed; but she was old enough to
be afraid; afraid of him, and afraid of herself; afraid of his
masterful nature and imperious will, which had always inclined to break
rather than bend anything which stood in his way; and afraid of
something in herself which leapt up in response to this fierce strength
in him, yearning to be mastered, hungry to yield, wishful to obey; yet
which, if yielded to, would lay her spirit in the dust, and turn the
awakened tenderness in her heart to scorn of herself, and anger against
him.
So she feared as she stood in the sunshine, watching the now empty
archway through which her sole remaining link with Convent life had
vanished; conscious, without looking round, that Debbie, who had been
curtseying behind her, was there no longer; that Martin Goodfellow, who
had held Shulamite's bridle while the Bishop mounted, had disappeared
in one direction, the rest of the men in another; intensely conscious
that she and Hugh were now alone; and fearing, she shivered again, as
she had shivered in the crypt; then, of a sudden, knew that she had
done so, and, with a swift impulse of shame and contrition, turned and
looked at Hugh.
He was indeed the "splendid Knight" of Mary Antony's vision! He had
donned for his bridal the dress of white and silver, which he had last
put on when he supped at the Palace with the Bishop. This set off,
with striking effect, his dark head and the noble beauty of his
countenance; and Mora, who chiefly remembered him as a handsome youth,
graceful and gay, realised for the first time his splendour as a man,
and the change wrought in him by all he had faced, endured, and
overcome.
In the crypt, the day before, and during the hours which followed, she
had scarce let herself look at him; and he, though always close beside
her, had kept out of her immediate range of vision.
Since that infolding clasp in the crypt when he had flung the cloak
about her, not once had he touched her, until the Church just now bade
him, with authority, to take her right hand, with his.
Her mind flew back to the happenings of the previous day. With the
lightning rapidity of retrospective thought, she passed again through
each experience from the moment when the call of the blackbird sounded
in the crypt. The helpless horror of being lifted by unseen hands; the
slow, swinging progress, to the accompaniment of the measured tread of
the men-at-arms; the stifling darkness, air and light shut out by the
heavy cloak, and yet the clear consciousness of the moment when the
stretcher passed from the Cathedral into the sunshine without; the
sudden pause, as the Bishop met the stretcher, and then--as she lay
helpless between them--Symon's question and Hugh's reply, with their
subtlety of hidden meaning, which filled her with impotent anger,
shewing as it did the completeness of the Bishop's connivance at Hugh's
conspiracy. Then Hugh's request, and the Bishop's hand laid upon her,
the Bishop's voice uplifted in blessing. Then once again the measured
tramp, tramp, and the steady swing of the stretcher; but now the men's
heels rang on cobbles, and voices seemed everywhere; cheery greetings,
snatches of song, chance words concerning a bargain or a meeting, a
light jest, a coarse oath; and, all the while, the steady, tramp,
tramp, and the ring of Hugh's spurs.
She grew faint and it seemed to her she was about to die beneath the
cloak, and that when at length Hugh removed it, it would prove a pall
beneath which he would find a dead bride.
"Dead bride! Dead bride!" sounded the tramping footsteps. And all the
way she was haunted by the belief, assailing her confused senses in the
darkness, that the spirit of Father Gervaise had met the stretcher;
that his was the voice which murmured low and tenderly; "Be not afraid,
neither be thou dismayed. Go in peace."
With this had come a horror of the outer world, a wild desire for the
safety and shelter of the Cloister, and an absolute physical dread of
the moment when the covering cloak should be removed, and she would
find herself alone with her lover; and, on rising from the stretcher,
be seized by his arms.
Yet when, having been tilted up steps, she was conscious of the silence
of passages and soon the even more complete quiet of a room; when the
stretcher was set down, and the bearers' feet died away, Hugh's deep
voice said gently: "Change thy garments quickly, my belovèd. There is
no time to lose." But he laid no hand upon the cloak, and his
footsteps, also, died away.
Then pushing back the heavy folds and sitting up, she had found herself
alone in a bedchamber, everything she could need laid ready to her
hand; while, upon the bed, lay her green riding-dress, discarded
forever, eight years before!
Her mind refused to look back upon the half-hour that followed.
She saw herself next appearing in the doorway at the top of a flight of
eight steps, leading down into the yard of the hostelry, where a
cavalcade of men and horses waited; while Icon, the Bishop's beautiful
white palfrey, was being led to and fro, and Hugh stood with an open
letter in his hand.
As she hesitated in the doorway, gazing down upon the waiting, restive
crowd, Hugh looked up and saw her. Into his eyes flashed a light of
triumphant joy, of adoring love and admiration. She had avoided
looking at her own reflection; but his face, as he came up the steps,
mirrored her loveliness. It had cost her such anguish of soul to
divest herself of her sacred habit and don these gay garments belonging
to a life long left behind, that his evident delight in the change,
moved her to an unreasonable resentment. Also that sudden blaze of
love in his dark eyes, dazzled her heart, even as a burst of sunshine
might dazzle one used to perpetual twilight.
She took the Bishop's letter, with averted eyes; read it; then moved
swiftly down the steps to where Icon waited.
"Mount me," she said to Martin Goodfellow, as she passed him; and it
was Martin who swung her into the saddle.
Then she trembled at what she had done, in yielding to this impulse
which made her shrink from Hugh.
As the black mane of his horse drew level with Icon's head, and side by
side they rode out from the courtyard, she feared a thunder-cloud on
the Knight's brow, and a sullen silence, as the best she could expect.
But calm and cheerful, his voice fell on her ear; and glancing at him
furtively, she still saw on his face that light which dazzled her
heart. Yet no word did he speak which all might not have heard, and
not once did he lay his hand on hers. Each time they dismounted, she
saw him sign to Martin Goodfellow, and it was Martin who helped her to
alight.
All this, in rapid retrospect, passed through Mora's mind as she stood
alone beside her splendid Knight, miserably conscious that she had
shivered, and that he knew it; and fearful lest he divined the
shrinking of her soul away from him, away from love, away from all for
which love stood. Alas, alas! Why did this man--this most human,
ardent, loving man--hang all his hopes of happiness upon the heart of a
nun? Would it be possible that he should understand, that eight years
of cloistered life cannot be renounced in a day?
Mora looked at him again.
The stern profile might well be about to say: "Shudder again, and I
will do to thee that which shall give thee cause to shudder indeed!"
Yet, at that moment he spoke, and his voice was infinitely gentle.
"Yonder rides a true friend," he said. "One who has learned love's
deepest lesson."
"What is love's deepest lesson?" she asked.
He turned and looked at her, and the fire of his dark eyes was drowned
in tenderness.
"That true love means self-sacrifice," he said. "Come, my belovèd.
Let us walk in the gardens, where we can talk at ease of our plans for
the days to come."