"Our plans may be disjointed,
But we may calmly rest:
What God has once appointed
Is better than our best."--Frances Ridley Havergal.
The Countess left Clarice prostrate on the ground, sobbing as if her
heart would break--Olympias feebly trying to raise and soothe her,
Roisia looking half-stunned, and Felicia palpably amused by the scene.
"Thou hadst better get up, child," said Diana, in a tone divided between
constraint and pity. "It will do thee no good to lie there. We shall
all have to put up with the same thing in our turn. I haven't got the
man I should have chosen; but I suppose it won't matter a hundred years
hence."
"I am not so sure of that," said Roisia, in a low voice.
"Oh, thou art disappointed, I know," said Diana. "I would hand Fulk
over to thee with pleasure, if I could. I don't want him. But I
suppose he will do as well as another, and I shall take care to be
mistress. It is something to be married--to anybody."
"It is everything to be married to the right man," said Roisia; "but it
is something very awful to be married to the wrong one."
"Oh, one soon gets over that," was Diana's answer. "So long as you can
have your own way, I don't see that anything signifies much. I shall
not admire myself in my wedding-dress any the less because my squire is
not exactly the one I hoped it might be."
"Diana, I don't understand thee," responded Roisia. "What does it
matter, I should say, having thine own way in little nothings so long as
thou art not to have it in the one thing for which thou really carest?
Thou dost not mean to say that a velvet gown would console thee for
breaking thy heart?"
"But I do," said Diana. "I must be a countess before I could wear
velvet; and I would marry any man in the world who would make me a
countess."
Mistress Underdone, who had lifted up Clarice, and was holding her in
her arms, petting her into calmness as she would a baby, now thought fit
to interpose.
"My maids," she said, "there are women who have lost their hearts, and
there are women who were born without any. The former case has the more
suffering, yet methinks the latter is really the more pitiable."
"Well, I think those people pitiable enough who let their hearts break
their sleep and interfere with their appetites," replied Diana. "I have
got over my disappointment already; and Clarice will be a simpleton if
she do not."
"I expect Clarice and I will be simpletons," said Roisia, quietly.
"Please yourselves, and I will please myself," answered Diana. "Now,
mistress, Clarice seems to have given over crying for a few seconds; may
we see the gear?"
"Oh, I want Father Bevis!" sobbed Clarice, with a fresh gush of tears.
"Ay, my dove, thou wilt be the better of shriving," said Mistress
Underdone, tenderly. "Sit thee down a moment, and I will see to Father
Bevis. Wait awhile, Diana."
It was not many minutes before she came back with Father Bevis, who took
Clarice into his oratory; and as it was a long while before she rejoined
them, the others--Roisia excepted--had almost time to forget the scene
they had witnessed, in the interest of turning over Diana's _trousseau_,
and watching her try on hoods and mantles.
The interview with Father Bevis was unsatisfactory to Clarice. She
wanted comfort, and he gave her none. Advice he was ready with in
plenty; but comfort he could not give her, because he could not see why
she wanted it. He was simply incapable of understanding her. He was
very kind, and very anxious to comfort her, if he could only have told
how to do it. But love--spiritual love excepted--was a stranger to his
bosom. No one had ever loved him; he could not remember his parents; he
had never had brother nor sister; and he had never made a friend. His
heart was there, but it had never been warmed to life. Perhaps he came
nearest to loving the Earl his master; but even this feeling awakened
very faint pulsations. His capacity for loving human beings had been
simply starved to death. Such a man as this, however anxious to be kind
and helpful, of course could not enter in the least into the position of
Clarice. He told her many very true things, if she had been capable of
receiving them; he tried his very best to help her; but she felt through
it all that they were barbarians to each other, and that Father Bevis
regarded her as partially incomprehensible and wholly silly.
Father Bevis told Clarice that the chief end of man was to glorify God,
and to enjoy Him for ever; that no love was worthy in comparison with
His; that he who loved father and mother more than Christ was not worthy
of Him. All very true, but the stunned brain and lacerated heart could
not take it in. The drugs were pure and precious, but they were not the
medicine for her complaint. She only felt a sensation of repulsion.
Clarice did not know that the Earl was doing his very best to rescue
her. He insisted on Father Miles going to the Countess about it; nay,
he even ventured an appeal to her himself, though it always cost him
great pain to attempt a conversation with this beloved but irresponsive
woman. But he took nothing by his motion. The Countess was as
obstinate as she was absolute. If anything, the opposition to her will
left her just a shade more determined. In vain her husband pleaded
earnestly with her not to spoil two lives. Hers had been spoiled, she
replied candidly: these ought not to be better off, nor should they be.
"Life has been spoiled for us both," said the Earl, sadly; "but I should
have thought that a reason why we might have been tenderer to others."
"You are a fool!" said the Countess with a flash of angry scorn.
They were the first words she had spoken to him for eighteen years.
"Maybe, my Lady," was the gentle answer. "It would cost me less to be
accounted a fool than it would to break a heart."
And he left her, feeling himself baffled and his endeavours useless, yet
with a glow at his heart notwithstanding. His Margaret had spoken to
him at last. That her words were angry, even abusive, was a
consideration lost in the larger fact. Tears which did not fall welled
up from the soft heart to the dove-like eyes, and he went out to the
terrace to compose himself. "O Margaret, Margaret! if you could have
loved me!" He never thought of blaming her--only of winning her as a
dim hope of some happy future, to be realised when it was God's will.
He had never yet dared to look his cross in the face sufficiently to
add, if it were God's will.
When the Monday came, which was to be the last day of Clarice's maiden
life, it proved a busy, bustling day, with no time for thought until the
evening. Clarice lived through it as best she might. Diana seemed to
have put her disappointment completely behind her, and to be thoroughly
consoled by the bustle and her _trousseau_.
One consideration never occurred to any of the parties concerned, which
would be thought rather desirable in the nineteenth century. This was,
that the respective bridegrooms should have any interview with their
brides elect, or in the slightest degree endeavour to make themselves
agreeable. They met at meals in the great hall, but they never
exchanged a word. Clarice did not dare to lift her eyes, lest she
should meet those either of Vivian or Piers. She kept them diligently
fixed upon her trencher, with which she did little else than look at it.
The evening brought a lull in the excitement and busy labour. The
Countess, attended by Felicia, had gone to the Palace on royal
invitation. Clarice sat on the terrace, her eyes fixed on the river
which she did not see, her hands lying listlessly in her lap. Though
she had heard nothing, that unaccountable conviction of another
presence, which comes to us all at times, seized upon her; and she
looked up to see Piers Ingham.
The interview was long, and there is no need to add that it was painful.
The end came at last.
"Wilt thou forget me, Clarice?" softly asked Piers.
"I ought," was the answer, with a gush of tears, "if I can."
"I cannot," was the reply. "But one pain I can spare thee, my beloved.
The Lady means to retain thee in her service as damsel of the chamber."
[Note 1.]
If Clarice could have felt any lesser grief beside the one great one,
she would have been sorry to hear that.
"I shall retire," said Sir Piers, "from my Lord's household. I will not
give thee the misery of meeting me day by day. Rather I will do what I
can to help thee to forget me. It is the easier for me, since I have
had to offend my Lady by declining the hand of Felicia de Fay, which she
was pleased to offer me."
"The Lady offered Felicia to thee?"
Sir Piers bent his head in assent. Clarice felt as if she could have
poisoned Felicia, and have given what arsenic remained over to the Lady
Margaret.
"And are we never to meet again?" she asked, with an intonation of
passionate sorrow.
"That must depend on God's will," said Sir Piers, gravely.
Clarice covered her face with both hands, and the bitter tears trickled
fast through her fingers.
"Oh, why is God's will so hard?" she cried. "Could He not have left us
in peace? We had only each other."
"Hush, sweet heart! It is wrong to say that. And yet it is hardly
possible not to think it."
"It is not possible!" sobbed Clarice. "Does not God know it is not
possible?"
"I suppose He must," said Sir Piers, gloomily.
There was no comfort in the thought to either. There never is any to
those who do not know God. And Piers was only feeling after Him, if
haply he might find Him, and barely conscious even of that; while
Clarice had not reached even that point. To both of them, in this very
anguish, Christ was saying, "Come unto Me;" but their own cry of pain
hindered them from hearing Him. It was not likely they should hear,
just then, when the sunlight of life was being extinguished, and the
music was dying to its close. But afterwards, in the silence and the
darkness, when the sounds were hushed and the lights were out, and there
was nothing that could be done but to endure, then the still, small
voice might make itself heard, and the crushed hearts might sob out
their answer.
So they parted. "They took but ane kiss, and tare themselves away," to
meet when it was God's will, and not knowing on which side of the river
of death that would be.
Half an hour had passed since Sir Piers' step had died away on the
terrace, and Clarice still sat where he had left her, in crushed and
silent stillness. If this night could only be the end of it! If things
had not to go on!
"Clarice," said a pitying voice; and a hand was laid upon her head as if
in fatherly blessing.
Clarice was too stunned with pain to remember her courtly duties. She
only looked up at Earl Edmund.
"Clarice, my poor child! I want thee to know that I did my best for
thee."
"I humbly thank your Lordship," Clarice forced herself to say.
"And it may be, my child, though it seems hard to believe, that God is
doing His best for thee too."
"Then what would His worst be?" came in a gush from Clarice.
"It might be that for which thou wouldst thank Him now."
The sorrowing girl was arrested in spite of herself, for the Earl spoke
in that tone of quiet certainty which has more effect on an undecided
mind than any words. She wondered how he knew, not realising that he
knows "more than the ancients" who knows God and sorrow.
"My child," said the Earl again, "man's best and God's best are often
very different things. In the eyes of Monseigneur Saint Jacob, the best
thing would have been to spare his son from being cast into the pit and
sold to the Ishmaelites. But God's best was to sell the boy into
slavery, and to send him into a dungeon, and then to lift him up to the
steps of the king's throne. When _then_ comes, Clarice, we shall be
satisfied with what happened to us now."
"When will it come, my Lord?" asked Clarice, in a dreary tone.
"When it is best," replied the Earl quietly.
"Your Lordship speaks as if you knew!" said Clarice.
"God knows. And he who knows God may be sure of everything else."
"Is it so much to know God?"
"It is life. `Without God' and `Without hope' are convertible terms."
"My Lord," said Clarice, wondering much to hear a layman use language
which it seemed to her was only fit for priests, "how may one know God?"
"Go and ask Him. How dost thou know any one? Is it not by converse and
companionship?"
There was a silent pause till the Earl spoke again.
"Clarice," he said, "our Lord has a lesson to teach thee. It rests with
thee to learn it well or ill. If thou choose to be idle and obstinate,
and refuse to learn, thou mayst sit all day long on the form in
disgrace, and only have the task perfect at last when thou art wearied
out with thine own perverseness. But if thou take the book willingly,
and apply thyself with heart and mind, the task will be soon over, and
the teacher may give thee leave to go out into the sunshine."
"My Lord," said Clarice, "I do not know how to apply your words here.
How can I learn this task quickly?"
"Dost thou know, first, what the task is?"
"Truly, no."
"Then let a brother tell thee who has had it set to him. It is a hard
lesson, Clarice, and one that an inattentive scholar can make yet harder
if he will. It is, `Not my will, but Thine, be done.'"
"I cannot! I cannot!" cried Clarice passionately.
"Some scholars say that," replied the Earl gently, "until the evening
shadows grow very long. They are the weariest of all when they reach
home."
"My Lord, pardon me, but you cannot understand it!" Clarice stood up.
"I am young, and you--"
"I am over forty years," replied the Earl. "Ah, child, dost thou make
that blunder?--dost thou think the child's sorrows worse than the man's?
I have known both, and I tell thee the one is not to be compared to the
other. Young hearts are apt to think it, for grief is a thing new and
strange to them. But if ever it become to thee as thy daily bread, thou
wilt understand it better. It has been mine, Clarice, for eighteen
years."
That was a year more than Clarice had been in the world. She looked up
wonderingly into the saddened, dove-like Plantagenet eyes--those eyes
characteristic of the House--so sweet in repose, so fiery in anger.
Clarice had but a dim idea what his sorrow was.
"My Lord," she said, half inquiringly, "methinks you never knew such a
grief as mine?"
The smile which parted the Earl's lips was full of pity.
"Say rather, maiden, that thou never knewest one like mine. But God
knows both, Clarice, and He pities both, and when His time comes He will
comfort both. At the best time, child! Only let us acquaint ourselves
with Him, for so only can we be at peace. And now, farewell. I had
better go in and preach my sermon to myself."
Clarice was left alone again. She did not turn back to exactly the same
train of thought. A new idea had been given her, which was to become
the germ of a long train of others. She hardly put it into words, even
to herself; but it was this--that God meant something. He was not
sitting on the throne of the universe in placid indifference to her
sorrows; neither was He a malevolent Being who delighted in interfering
with the plans of His creatures simply to exhibit His own power. He was
doing this--somehow--for her benefit. She saw neither the how nor the
why; but He saw them, and He meant good to her. All the world was not
limited to the Slough of Despond at her feet. There was blue sky above.
Very vaguely Clarice realised this. But it was sufficient to soften the
rocky hardness which had been the worst element of her pain--to take
away the blind chance against which her impotent wings had been beaten
in vain efforts to escape from the dark cage. It was that contact with
"the living will of a living person," which gives the human element to
what would otherwise be hard, blind, pitiless fate.
Clarice rose, and looked up to the stars. No words came. The cry of
her heart was, "O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me." But she was
too ignorant to weave it into a prayer. When human hearts look up to
God in wordless agony, the Intercessor translates the attitude into the
words of Heaven.
Sad or bright, there was no time for thought on the Tuesday morning.
The day was bitterly cold, for it was the 16th of January 1291, and a
heavy hoar-frost silvered all the trees, and weighed down the bushes in
the Palace garden. Diana, wrapped in her white furs, was the picture of
health and merriment. Was it because she really had not enough heart to
care, or because she was determined not to give herself a moment to
consider? Clarice, white as the fur round her throat, pale and
heavy-eyed, grave and silent, followed Diana into the Palace chapel.
The Countess was there, handsomely attired, and the Earl, in golden
armour; but they stood on opposite sides of the chancel, and the former
ignored her lord's existence. Diana's wedding came first. De Chaucombe
behaved a little more amiably than usual, and, contrary to all his
habits, actually offered his hand to assist his bride to rise. Then
Diana fell back to the side of the Countess, and Fulk to that of the
Earl, and Clarice recognised that the moment of her sacrifice was come.
With one passionately pleading look at the Lady Margaret--who met it as
if she had been made of stone--Clarice slowly moved forward to the
altar. She shuddered inwardly as Vivian Barkeworth took her hand into
his clasp, and answered the queries addressed to her in so low a voice
that Father Miles took the words for granted. It seemed only a few
minutes before she woke to the miserable truth that she was now Vivian's
wife, and that to think any more of Piers Ingham was a sin against God.
Clarice dragged herself through the bridal festivities--how, she never
knew. Diana was the life of the party. So bright and gay she was that
she might never have heard of such a thing as disappointment. She
danced with everybody, entered into all the games with the zest of an
eager child, and kept the hall ringing with merry laughter, while
Clarice moved through them all as if a weight of lead were upon her, and
looked as though she should never smile again. Accident at length threw
the two brides close together.
"Art thou going to look thus woe-begone all thy life through, Clarice?"
inquired the Lady De Chaucombe.
"I do not know," answered Clarice, gloomily. "I only hope it will not
be long."
"What will not be long?--thy sorrowful looks?"
"No--my life."
"Don't let me hear such nonsense," exclaimed Diana, with a little of her
old sharpness. "Men are all deceivers, child. There is not one of them
worth spoiling a woman's life for. Clarice, don't be a simpleton!"
"Not more than I can help," said Clarice, with the shadow of a smile;
and then De Echingham came up and besought her hand for the next dance,
and she was caught away again into the whirl.
The dancing, which was so much a matter of course at a wedding, that
even the Countess did not venture to interfere with it, was followed by
the hoydenish romps which were considered equally necessary, and which
fell into final desuetude about the period of the accession of the House
of Hanover. King Charles the First's good taste had led him to frown
upon them, and utterly to prohibit them at his own wedding; but the
people in general were attached to their amusements, rough and even
gross as they often were, and the improvement filtered down from palace
to cottage only very slowly.
The cutting of the two bride-cakes, as usual, was one of the most
interesting incidents. It was then, and long afterwards, customary to
insert three articles in a bride-cake, which were considered to foretell
the fortunes of the persons in whose possession they were found when the
cakes were cut up. The gold ring denoted speedy marriage; the silver
penny indicated future wealth; while the thimble infallibly doomed its
recipient to be an old maid. The division of Diana's cake revealed Sir
Reginald de Echingham in possession of the ring, evidently to his
satisfaction; while Olympias, with the reverse sensation, discovered in
her slice both the penny and the thimble. Clarice's cake proved even
more productive of mirth; for the thimble fell to the Countess, while
the Earl held up the silver penny, laughingly remarking that he was the
last person who ought to have had that, since he had already more of
them than he wanted. But the fun came to its apex when the ring was
discovered in the hand of Mistress Underdone, who indignantly asserted
that if a thousand gold rings were showered upon her from as many cakes
they would not induce her to marry again. She thought two husbands were
enough for any reasonable woman; and if not, she was too old now for
folly of that sort. Sir Lambert sent the company into convulsions of
laughter by clasping his hands on this announcement with a look of
pretended despair, upon which Mistress Underdone, justly indignant, gave
him such a box on the ear that he was occupied in rubbing it for the
next ten minutes, thereby increasing the merriment of the rest. Loudest
and brightest of all the laughers was Diana. She at least had not
broken her heart. Clarice, pale and silent in the corner, where she sat
and watched the rest, dimly wondered if Diana had any heart to break.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1. There were two divisions of "damsels" in the household of a
mediaeval princess, the _domicellae_ and the _domicellae camera_. The
former, who corresponded to the modern Maids of Honour, were young and
unmarried; the latter, the Ladies of the Bedchamber, were always married
women. Sufficient notice of this distinction has not been taken by
modern writers. Had it so been, the supposition long held of the
identity of Philippa Chaucer, _domicella camera_, with Philippa Pycard,
_domicella_, could scarcely have arisen; nor should we be told that
Chaucer's marriage did not occur until 1369, or later, when we find
Philippa in office as Lady of the Bedchamber in 1366.