Mistress Underdone raised her hands with an exclamation of shocked
surprise, to which Heliet's look of horror formed a fitting corollary.
Clarice was conscious only of a confused medley of feelings, from which
none but a sense of amazement stood out in the foreground. Then the
Earl quietly told her that, in leaping a wide ditch, Vivian had been
thrown from his horse, and had never spoken more.
No one tried to comfort Clarice. Pitifully they all felt that comfort
was not wanted now. The death of Rosie had been a crushing blow; but
Vivian's, however sudden, could hardly be otherwise than a relief. The
only compassion that any one could feel was for him, for whom there
was--
"No reckoning made, but sent to his account
With all his imperfections on his head."
The very fact that she could not regret him on her own account lay a
weight on Clarice's conscience, though it was purely his own fault.
Severely as she tried to judge herself, she could recall no instance in
which, so far as such a thing can be said of any human sinner, she had
not done her duty by that dead man. She had obeyed him in letter and
spirit, however distasteful it had often been to herself; she had
consulted his wishes before her own; she had even honestly tried to love
him, and he had made it impossible. Now, she could not resist the
overwhelming consciousness that his death was to her a release from her
fetters--a coming out of prison. She was free from the perpetual drag
of apprehension on the one hand, and of constantly endeavouring on the
other to please a man who was determined not to be pleased. The spirit
of the uncaged bird awoke within her--a sense of freedom, and light, and
rest, such as she had not known for those eight weary years of her
married slavery.
Yet the future was no path of roses to the eyes of Clarice. She was not
free in the thirteenth century, in the sense in which she would have
been free in the nineteenth, for she had no power to choose her own lot.
All widows were wards of the Crown; and it was not at all usual for the
Crown to concern its august self respecting their wishes, unless they
bought leave to comply with them at a very costly price. By a singular
perversion of justice, the tax upon a widow who purchased permission to
remarry or not, at her pleasure, was far heavier than the fine exacted
from a man who married a ward of the Crown without royal licence. The
natural result of this arrangement was that the ladies who were either
dowered widows or spinster heiresses very often contracted clandestine
marriages, and their husbands quietly endured the subsequent fine and
imprisonment, as unavoidable evils which were soon over, and well worth
the advantage which they purchased.
It seemed, however, as if blessings, no less than misfortunes, were not
to come single to Clarice Barkeworth. A few weeks after Vivian's death,
the Earl silently put a parchment into her hand, which conveyed to her
the information that King Edward had granted to his well-beloved cousin,
Edmund, Earl of Cornwall, the marriage of Clarice, widow of Vivian
Barkeworth, knight, with the usual proviso that she was not to marry one
of the King's enemies. This was, indeed, something for which to be
thankful. Clarice knew that her future was as safe in her master's
hands as in her own.
"Ah!" said Heliet, when that remark was made to her, "if we could only
have felt, dear heart, that it was as safe in the hands of his Master!"
"Was I very faithless, Heliet?" said Clarice, with tears in her eyes.
"Dear heart, no more than I was!" was Heliet's answer.
"But has it not occurred to thee, Heliet, now--why might I not have had
Rosie?"
"I know not, dear Clarice, any more than Rosie knew, when she was a babe
in thine arms, why thou gavest her bitter medicine. Oh, leave all that
alone--our Master understands what He is doing."
It was the middle of September, and about two months after Vivian's
death. Clarice sat sewing, robed in the white weeds of widowhood, in
the room which she usually occupied in the Countess's tower. The
garments worn by a widow were at this time extremely strict and very
unbecoming, though the period during which they were worn was much less
stringent than now. From one to six months was as long as many widows
remained in that condition. Heliet had not been seen for an hour or
more, and Mistress Underdone, with some barely intelligible remarks very
disparaging to "that Nell," who stood, under her, at the head of the
kitchen department, had disappeared to oversee the venison pasty.
Clarice was doing something which she had not done for eight years,
though hardly aware that she was doing it--humming a troubadour song.
Getting past an awkward place in her work, words as well as music became
audible--
"And though my lot were hard and bare,
And though my hopes were few,
Yet would I dare one vow to swear
My heart should still be true."
"Wouldst thou, Clarice?" asked a voice behind her.
Clarice's delicate embroidery got the worst of it, for it dropped in a
heap on the rushes, and nobody paid the slightest attention to it for a
considerable time. Nor did any one come near the room until Heliet made
her appearance, and she came so slowly, and heralded her approach by
such emphatic raps of her crutches on the stone floor, that Clarice
could scarcely avoid the conclusion that she was a conspirator in the
plot. The head and front of it all, however, was manifestly Earl
Edmund, who received Sir Piers with a smile and no other greeting--a
distinct intimation that it was not the first time they had met that
day.
The wedding--which nobody felt inclined to dispute--was fixed for the
fifteenth of October. The Earl wished it to take place when he could be
present and give away the bride, and he wanted first a fortnight's
retreat at Ashridge, to which place he had arranged to go on the last
day of September. Sir Piers stepped at once into his old position, but
the Earl took Ademar with him to Ashridge. He gave the grant of
Clarice's marriage to Piers himself, in the presence of the household,
with the remark:--
"It will be better in your hands than mine; and there is no time like
the present."
Into Clarice's hand her master put a shining pile of gold for the
purchase of wedding garments and jewellery.
"I am glad," he said, "that your path through life is coming to the
roses now. I would hope the thorns are over for you--at least for some
time. There have been no roses for me; but I can rejoice, I hope, with
those for whom they blossom."
And so he rode away from Berkhamsted, looking back to smile a farewell
to Heliet and Clarice, as they stood watching him in the gateway. Long
years afterwards they remembered that kind, almost affectionate, smile.
As the ladies turned into their own tower, and began to ascend the
staircase--always a slow process with Heliet--Clarice said, "I cannot
understand why our Lord the Earl has such a lonely and sorrowful lot."
"Thou wouldst like to understand everything, Clarice," returned Heliet,
smiling.
"I would!" she answered. "I can understand my own troubles better, for
I know how much there is in me that needs setting right; but he--why he
is almost an angel already."
"Perhaps he would tell thee the same thing," said Heliet. "I am afraid,
dear heart, if thou hadst the graving of our Lord's gems, thou wouldst
stop the tool before the portrait was in sufficient relief."
"But when the portrait _is_ in sufficient relief?" answered Clarice,
earnestly.
"Ah, dear heart!" said Heliet, "neither thine eyes nor mine are fine
enough to judge of that."
"It seems almost a shame to be happy when I know he is not," replied
Clarice, the tears springing to her eyes; "our dear master, who has been
to me as a very angel of God."
"Nay, dear, he would wish thee to be happy," gently remonstrated Heliet.
"I believe both thou and I are to him as daughters, Clarice."
"I wish I could make him happy!" said Clarice, as they turned into her
rooms.
"Ask God to do it," was Heliet's response.
They both asked Him that night. And He heard and answered them, but, as
is often the case, not at all as they expected.