loved, to divorce my Guy, my king of men! To be willing to do it!--to
purchase her fair, proud inheritance at the price of the heart which
loved her, and which she loved! My heart and brain alike cried out,
Impossible!
Was I dreaming? This thing could not be,--should not be! Holy Saints,
let me wake and know it!
"It is not possible!" I shrieked. "She will not--she cannot! Did she
not say so?"
"Her first words," said Lady Judith, "were utterly and indignantly to
refuse compliance."
"Well!--and then?"
"Then several of the nobles pressed it upon her, endeavouring to show
her the advantages to be derived from the divorce."
"Advantages!" I cried.
"To the country, dear," said Lady Judith gently. "But for four hours she
held out. No word was to be wrung from her but 'I could not dream of
such a thing!' 'Then, Lady,' said the Lord Count of Edessa, 'you can no
longer be our Queen.'"
"And did that sway her?" I cried indignantly.
"Nothing seemed to sway her, till Count Guy rose himself, and, though
with faltering lips, earnestly entreated her assent. Then she gave way
so far as to promise to consider the question."
That was like Guy. If he thought it for her good, I am sure he would
urge it upon her, though it broke his own heart. But for her to give
way _then_----!
"Holy Mother, tell me she will not do it!" I cried.
"She has locked herself up, to think and pray," said Lady Judith. "But
it is well to know the worst at once,--I think she will, Helena."
"Holy Mother, you must have gone mad!"
I did not mean to be rude. I was only in too great agony to see any
thing but itself. And Lady Judith seemed to understand.
"Who proposed it?" I demanded.
Ah! I knew what the answer would be. "Count Raymond of Tripoli."
"Well, he cannot be the one she weds!" said I, grinding my teeth.
"He can, Helena. The Countess has been dead these four months. He says
he wrote to tell us, and his letter must have miscarried."
"And is Satan to have it all his own way?" I cried.
"No, assuredly, dear child. Christ is stronger than he."
"Holy Mother, can you see one speck of light in this thick and horrible
darkness?"
"I never see but one light in any darkness," she said. "'God is light,
and darkness in Him there is none at all.' Dear Helena, wilt thou not
put thine hand in His, and let Him lead thee to the light?"
"Could the good God not have prevented all this?" I wailed.
"Perhaps not, for thy sake," she said softly.
"Oh, she will not, she will not!" I moaned. "Holy Mother, tell me she
never will!"
"I cannot, dear. On the contrary, I think she will."
"I never could have believed it of Lady Sybil!"
Lady Judith made no reply; but I thought the expression of pain deepened
in her face.
"Dear Helena," was her gentle answer, "sometimes we misunderstand our
friends. And very often we misunderstand our Father."
She tried to comfort me: but I was past comfort. I was past food,
sleep,--every thing. I went to bed,--it was a miserable relief to get
away from the daylight; but I could not sleep, and no tears would come.
Only one exceeding bitter cry,--
"Help me, Jesu Christ!"
Would He help me? What had I ever been to Him, or done for Him, that He
should? He had shed His life-blood on the holy rood for me; and I had
barely ever so much as thanked Him for it. I had never cared about Him.
Where was the good of asking Him?
Yet I must cry to Him, for who else was there? Of course there were Mary
Mother and the holy saints: but--Oh, I hope it was not wicked!--it
seemed as if in my agony I pushed them all aside, and went straight up
to Him to whom all prayer must come at last.
"Help me, Jesu Christ!"
Where was Guy?--feeling, in his darkened chamber, as if his heart were
breaking?
Where was Sybil?--awake, perhaps, with a lighted lamp, wrestling between
the one love of her heart and the pride of life.
And where was God? Did He hear me? Would He hear? And the cry came
again, wrung from my very life as if I must have help.
"Help me, Jesu Christ! I have no help. I can do nothing. I can even
think of nothing. I can bear no more. Help me, not because I deserve
help, but because I want Thee!"
And the darkness went on, and the quiet beats of the water-clock, and
the low, musical cry of the watchmen outside; and the clang of arms as
they changed guard: but no holy angel came down from Heaven to tell me
that my prayer was heard, and that it should be to me even as I would.
Was there no help?--was there no hope?--was there no God in Heaven?
Oh, it cannot, cannot be that she will decide against him! Yet Lady
Judith thinks she will. I cannot imagine why. Our own sweet Sybil, to
whom he has seemed like the very life of her life! No, it can never be
true! She will never, never give him up.
*CHAPTER XIII.*
_*WAITING FOR THE INEVITABLE*_*.*
"Oh, hard to watch the shore-lights,
And yet no signal make!
Hardest, to him the back on Love,
For Love's own blessed sake!
For me the darkness riseth,
But not for me the light;
I breast the waters' heaving foam
For love of Love, to-night."
She has given him up,--my Guy, my hero, my king of men!
No, I could never have believed it! One short month ago, if all the
prophets and wise women and holy monks in Palestine had come in a body
and told me this thing, I should have laughed them to scorn,--I should
have thought the dead would rise first.
Ah! this is not our Sybil who has played this part. The Sybil whom I
loved, next to Guy himself, has vanished into nothingness, and in her
stead has come a creature that wears her face, and speaks with her
voice,--cold, calculating, false!
It was again Lady Judith who told me. I thought I was prepared for
this. But I found that I was not. By the crushing pain which struck me,
I knew that I had not really believed it would be thus,--that I had
clung, like a drowning man, to the rope which failed me in this
extremity--that I had honestly thought that the God to whom I had cried
all night long would have come and saved me.
That Sybil should fail was bitterness enough. But what was I to do when
Christ failed me? Either He could not hear at all, or He would not hear
me. And I did not see that it was of much consequence which it was,
since, so far as I was concerned, both came to the same thing.
The comfort Lady Judith tried to offer me sounded like cruel mockery.
Even the soft pressure of her hand upon my head rasped my heart like a
file.
"Poor, dear child!" she said. "It is so hard to walk in the dark. If
the Lord have marked thee for His own--as by the strivings of His Spirit
with thee, I trust He has--how sorry He must be for thee, just now!"
Sorry! Then why did He do it? When I am sorry for one I love, I do not
give him bitter pain. I felt as if I should sink and die, if I did not
get relief by pouring out my heart. I broke from Lady Judith,--she
tried in vain to stop me--and I dashed into Lady Sybil's chamber. Queen
or villein, it was all one to me then. I was far past any
considerations of that sort. If she had ordered me to be instantly
beheaded, I should not have thought it signified a straw.
I found her seated on the settle in the window. Oh, how white and worn
and weary she looked! Dark rings were round her eyes, worn by pain and
weeping and watching through that dreadful night. But I heeded not the
signs of her woe. She deserved them. Guy's wrong burned in my heart,
and consumed every thing but itself.
She rose hastily when she saw me, and a faint flush came to her white
cheek.
"Ah,--Helena!"
She spoke in a hesitating tone, as if she scarcely knew what to say.
She might well tremble before Guy's sister!
What a strange thing it is, that when our hearts are specially wrung
with distress, our eyes seem opened to notice all sorts of insignificant
minutiae which we should never see at another time, or should never
remember if we did see them. I perceived that one of the buttons of
Lady Sybil's robe had caught her chatelaine, and that a bow of ribbon on
her super-tunic was coming loose.
"May it please your Grace," I said--and I heard a hard metallic ring in
my own voice,--"have I heard the truth just now from Lady Judith?"
"What hast thou heard, Helena?"
I did not spare her for the crushing clasp of her hands, for the slight
quiver of the under lip. Let her suffer! Had she not wronged my Guy?
"I have heard that your Grace means to give way before the vulgar
clamour of your inferiors, and to repudiate your wedded lord at their
dictation."
No, I would not spare her so much as one adjective. She pressed her
lips close, and a sort of shudder went over her from head to foot. But
she said, in a calm, even voice, like a child repeating some formal
lesson--
"Thou hast heard the truth."
If she would have warmed into anger, and have resented my words, I think
I might have kept more within bounds. But she was as cold as ice, and
it infuriated me.
"And you call yourself a Christian and a Catholic?" cried I, raising my
voice.
"The Lord knoweth!" was her cool answer.
"The Lord look upon it, and avenge us!" I cried. "Do you know how I
loved you? Next to my love for Guy himself,--better than I loved any
other, save you two, in earth or Heaven! You!--was it you I loved? My
sister Sybil loved Guy, and would have died rather than sacrifice him to
a mob of parvenu nobles. She is gone, and you are come in her stead,
the saints know how! You are not the Sybil whom I loved, but a
stranger,--a cold, calculating, politic, false-hearted woman. Heartless,
ungenerous, faithless, false! I sweep you out of my heart this day, as
if you had never entered it. You are false to Guy, and false to God. I
will never, never, never forgive you! From this hour you are no more to
me than the meanest Paynim idolatress whom I would think scorn to
touch!"
I do not know whence my words came, but they poured out of me like the
rain in a tempest. I noted, without one spark of relenting, the shudder
which shook her again from head to foot when I named Guy,--the trembling
of lips and eyes,--the pitiful, appealing look. No, I would not spare
one atom of misery to the woman who had broken my Guy's heart.
Perhaps I was half mad. I do not know.
When I stopped, at last, she only said--
"It must look so to thee. But trust me, Helena."
"Trust you, Lady Sybil!--how to trust you?" I cried. "Have I not
trusted you these four years, before I knew you for what you are? And
you say, 'Trust me!'--Hear her, holy Saints! Ay, when I have done
trusting the scorpions of this land and the wolves of my own,--trust me,
I will trust you!"
She rose, and came to me, holding out both hands, with a look of piteous
appeal in those fair grey eyes that I used to love so much.
"I know," she said,--"I know. Thou must think so. Yet,--trust me,
Helena!"
I broke from her, and fled. I felt as if I could not bear to touch
her,--to look at her another moment. To my own chamber I ran, and
casting myself on the bed, I buried my face in the pillow, and lay there
motionless. I did not weep; my eyes were dry and hard as stones. I did
not pray; there was no good in it. Without God, without hope, without
any thing but crushing agony and a sense of cruel wrong,--I think in
that hour I was as near Hell as I could be, and live.
It was thus that Marguerite found me.
I heard her enter the room. I heard the half-exclamation, instantly
checked, which came to her lips. I heard her move quietly about the
chamber, arranging various little things, and at last come and stand
beside my bed.
"Damoiselle!"
I turned just enough to let her see my face.
"Is Satan tempting my Damoiselle very hard just now?"
What made her ask that question?
"No, Margot," I said, sitting up, and pushing the hair off my forehead.
"God is very, very cruel to me."
"Ah, let my Damoiselle hush there!" cried the old woman, in a tone of
positive pain. "No, no, never! She does not mean to cut her old nurse
to the heart, who loves her so dearly. But she will do it, if she says
such things of the gracious Lord."
"Now, Margot, listen to me. I thought something was going to happen
which would wring my heart to its very core. All night long I lay
awake, praying and crying to God to stay it. And He has not heard me.
He has let it happen--knowing what it would be to me. And dost thou not
call that cruel?"
"Ah, I guessed right. Satan is tempting my Damoiselle, very, very hard.
I thought so from her face.--Damoiselle, the good Lord cannot be cruel:
it is not in His nature. No, no!"
"Dost thou know what has happened, Margot?"
"I? Ha!--no."
"The Lady Sybil, incited by her nobles, has consented to divorce Count
Guy, and wed with another."
I saw astonishment, grief, indignation, chase one another over old
Marguerite's face, followed by a look of extreme perplexity. For a few
moments she stood thus, and did not speak. Then she put her hands
together, like a child at prayer, and lifted her eyes upward.
"Sir God," she said, "I cannot understand it. I do not at all see why
this is. Good Lord, it puzzles poor old Marguerite very much. But Thou
knowest. Thou knowest all things. And Thou canst not be hard, nor
cruel, whatever things may look like. Thou art love. Have patience
with us, Sir God, when we are puzzled, and when it looks to us as if
things were going all wrong. And teach the child, for she does not
know. My poor lamb is quite lost in the wilderness, and the great wolf
is very near her. Gentle Jesu Christ, leave the ninety and nine safe
locked in the good fold, and come and look for this little lamb. If
Thou dost not come, the great wolf will get her. And she is Thy little
lamb. It is very cold in the wilderness, and very dark. Oh, do make
haste!"
"Thou seemest to think that God Almighty is sure to hear thee, Margot,"
said I wearily.
Yet I could not help feeling touched by that simple prayer for me.
"Hear me?" she said. "Ah no, my Damoiselle, I cannot expect God
Almighty to hear me. But He will hear the blessed Christ. He always
hears Him. And He will ask for me what I really need, which is far
better than hearing me. Because, my Damoiselle sees, I make so many
blunders; but He makes none."
"What blunders didst thou make just now, Margot?"
"Ha! Do I know, I? When He translated it into the holy language of
Heaven, the blessed Christ would put them all right. Maybe, where I
said, 'Be quick,' He would say, 'Be slow.'"
"I am sure that would be a blunder!" said I bitterly.
"Ha! Does it not seem so, to my Damoiselle and her servant? But the
good God knows. If my Damoiselle would only trust Him!"
"'Trust'!" cried I, thinking of Sybil. "Ah, Margot, I have had enough
of trusting. I feel as if I could never trust man again--nor woman."
"Only one Man," said Marguerite softly. "And He died for us."
After saying that, she went away and left me. I lay still, her last
words making a kind of refrain in my head, mingling with the one thought
that seemed to fill every corner.
"He died for us!" Surely, then, He cannot hate us. He is not trying to
give us as much suffering as we can bear?
I rose at last, and went to seek Guy. But I had to search the house
almost through for him. I found him at length, in the base court,
gazing through one of the narrow windows through which the archers
shoot. The moment I saw his face, I perceived that though we might be
one in sorrow we were emphatically two in our respective ways of bearing
it. The quiet, patient grief in that faraway look which I saw in his
eyes, was dictated by a very different spirit from that which actuated
me. And he found it, too.
Not a word would he hear against Sybil. He nearly maddened me by calmly
assuming that her sufferings were beyond ours, and entreating me not to
let any words of mine add to her burden. It was so like Guy--always
himself last! And when I said passionately that God was cruel,
cruel!--he hushed me with the only flash of the old impetuosity that I
saw in him.
"No, Elaine, no! Let me never hear that again."
I was silent, but the raging of the sea went on within.
"I think," said Guy quietly, "that it is either in a great sorrow or a
serious illness that a man really sees himself as he is, if it please
God to give him leave. I have thought, until to-day, in a vague way,
that I loved God. I begin to wonder this morning whether I ever did at
all."
His words struck cold on me. Guy no true Christian!--my brave,
generous, noble, unselfish Guy! Then what was I likely to be?
"Guy," I said,--"_will_ she?" I could bear the torture no longer. And
I knew he would need no more.
"I think so, Elaine," was his quiet answer. "I hope so."
"'_Hope_ so'!"
"It is her only chance for the kingdom. The nobles are quite right,
dear. I am a foreigner; I am an adventurer; I am not a scion of any
royal house. It would very much consolidate her position to get rid of
me."
"And canst thou speak so calmly? I want to curse them all round, if I
cannot consume them!"
"I am past that, Elaine," said Guy in a low voice, not quite so firmly
as before. "Once, I did---- May the good Lord pardon me! His thunders
are not for mortal hands. And I am thankful that it is so."
"I suppose nobody is wicked, except me," I said bitterly. "Every body
else seems to be so terribly resigned, and so shockingly good, and so
every thing else that he ought to be: and--I will go, if thou hast no
objection, Guy. I shall be saying something naughty, if I don't."
Guy put his arm round me, and kissed my forehead.
"My poor little Lynette!" he said. "We can go home to Poitou, dear, and
be once more all in all to each other, as we used to be long ago.
Monseigneur will be glad to see us."
But I could not stand that. Partly Guy's dreadful calm, and partly that
allusion to the long ago when we were so much to each other, broke me
down, and laying my head down upon Guy's arm, I burst into a passionate
flood of tears.
Oh, what good they did me! I could scarcely have believed how much
quieted and lightened I should feel for them. Though there was no real
change, yet the most distressing part of the weight seemed gone. I
actually caught myself fancying what Monseigneur would say to us when we
came home.
Guy said he would go with me to my chamber. I was glad that we met no
one below. But as we entered the corridor at the head of the stairs,
little Agnes came running to us, holding up for admiration a string of
small blue beads.
"See, Baba!--See, Tan'!--Good!"
These are her names for Guy and me. Every thing satisfactory is "good"
with Agnes--it is her expressive word, which includes beautiful,
amiable, precious, and all other varieties. I felt as if my heart were
too sore to notice her, and I saw a spasm of pain cross Guy's face. But
he lifted the child in his arms, kissed her, and admired her treasure to
her baby heart's content. If I were but half as selfless as he!
"And who gave thee this, little one?"
"Amma. Good!"
It was the child's name for her mother. Ah, little Agnes, I cannot
agree with thee! "Amma" and "good" must no longer go into one sentence.
How could she play, to-day, with Guy's children?
Yet I suppose children must be fed, and cared for, and trained, and
amused,--even though their elders' hearts are breaking.
Oh, if I might lie down somewhere, and sleep, and awake eighteen years
ago, when I was a little sorrowless child like Agnes!
The coronation is fixed for Holy Cross Day. And Lady Sybil has
undertaken, as soon as she is crowned, to select her future husband.
One condition she has insisted on herself. Every noble, on the
coronation day, is to take a solemn oath that he will be satisfied with
and abide by her decision, and will serve the King of her choice for
ever. This seems to me a very wise and politic move, as it will prevent
any future disputes. Every body appears to have no doubt on whom her
choice will fall. All expect the Count of Tripoli.
Guy has requested permission to retire to Ascalon; and she has accorded
it, but with the express stipulation that he is to be in his place, with
the rest of her peers, at the coronation. It does seem to me a piece of
needless cruelty. Surely she might have spared him this!
I also have asked permission to retire from Court. Of course I go with
Guy. Whoever forsakes him, the little sister shall be true.
For about the first time in my life, I am thoroughly pleased with
Amaury. He is nearly as angry as I am--which is saying a great deal.
And he is the only person in whose presence I dare relieve my feelings
by saying what I think of Sybil, for Guy will not hear a word.
Eschine has the most extraordinary idea. She thinks that Sybil's heart
is true, and that only her head is wrong. It is all nonsense! Heart
and head go together.
The worst item of the agony is over--the divorce.
The ceremony was short enough. A speech--from Count Raymond--stating to
the public the necessities of the case; a declaration from both parties
that they acted of their own free will; a solemn sentence from the holy
Patriarch:--and all was over, and Guy and Sybil were both free to wed
again.
I did think Sybil would have fainted before she could get through the
few words she had to speak. But Guy was as calm and quiet as if he were
making some knightly speech. I cannot understand him. It seems so
unnatural for Guy.
I expressed some surprise afterwards.
"O Lynette! how could I make it harder for her!"
That was his answer. It was all for her. He seems to think himself not
worth considering.
We leave for Ascalon very early to-morrow; and as this was my last
night, I went to Lady Judith's cell to say farewell to her. On my way I
met Count Raymond, returning from an audience of Lady Sybil, with
triumph flashing in his eyes as he met mine. He evidently agrees with
the multitude that he has a good chance of the crown. My heart swelled
against him, but I managed to return his bow with courtesy, and passing
on, tapped at Lady Judith's door.
"Helena, dear child!--Come in," she said.
"I am come to bid you good-bye, holy Mother."
Lady Judith silently motioned me to a seat on her bed, and sat down
beside me.
"Is it quite as dark, my child?"
"Yes, quite!" I said, sighing.
"Poor child! I would give much to be able to comfort thee. But, please
God, thou wilt be comforted one day."
"The day seems a long way off, holy Mother."
"It seemed a long way off, dear, to the holy Jacob, the very day before
the waggons arrived to carry him down to his son Joseph. Yet it was
very near, Helena."
I listened with respect, of course: but I could not see what that had to
do with me. The waggons were not coming for me--that one thing was
certain.
"Wilt thou be here for the coronation, my child?"
"I shall be where Guy is," I said shortly. "But--O holy Mother, she
might have spared him that!"
Lady Judith's look was very pitiful. Yet she said--
"Perhaps not, my child."
Why, of course she might, if she would. What was to hinder her? But I
did not say so, for it would have been discourteous.
Even between me and my dear old Lady Judith there seemed a miserable
constraint. Was it any marvel? I rose to go. Almost noiselessly the
door opened, and before I could exclaim or escape, Sybil stood before
me.
"And wert thou going without any farewell--me,--little sister, Helena?"
I stood up, frozen into stone.
"I ask your Grace's pardon. We are not sisters _now_."
She turned aside, and covered her face with her hands.
"O Lynette! thou makest it so hard, so hard!"
"So hard?" said I coldly. "I hope I do. If your heart had not been
harder than the nether millstone, Lady Sybil, you would never, never
have required our presence at your coronation. God give you what you
deserve!"
"That is a terrible prayer, in general," she said, turning and meeting
my eyes. "And yet, Lynette, in this one thing, I dare to echo it. Ay,
God render unto me what I deserve!"
How could she? Oh, how could she?
Lady Judith kissed me, and I went away. I believe Sybil would have
kissed me too, but I would not have it from her.
It was easy, after that, to say farewell to the rest.
"I wish I were going too!" growled Amaury.
Then why does he not? He might if he chose. Just like Amaury!
"Farewell, dear," said Eschine. "I shall miss thee, Elaine."
--And nobody else. Yes, I know that.
So we go forth. Driven out of our Paradise, like Adam and Eva. But the
flaming sword is held by no angel of God.
I always thought it such a dreadful thing, that our first parents should
be driven out of Paradise. Why could not God have let them stay? It
was not as if He had wanted it for the angels. If He had meant to use
it for any thing, it would be on the earth now.
I cannot understand! Oh, why, why, _why_ are all these terrible things?
"I cannot understand either," says old Marguerite. "But I can trust the
good God, and I can wait till He tells me. I am happier than my
Damoiselle,--always wanting to know."