The White Ladies of Worcester - Florence Louisa Barclay (best classic books of all time txt) 📗

a pearly dawn at sea--passed, and been lost to view; she saw herself left in utter loneliness, the heavy door locked by her own turning of the key, he on one side, she on the other, for ever; she saw herself lying beneath the ground, in darkness and desolation, her face in the damp dust where his feet had stood.

"Do you love Hugh?" again demanded the Bishop.

And the Prioress lifted eyes full of suffering, reproach, and pain, but also full of courage and truth, to his face, and answered simply: "Alas, my lord, I do."

The silence thereafter following was tense with conflict. The Bishop turned his eyes to the figure of the Redeemer upon the cross, self-sacrifice personified, while the Prioress mastered her emotion.

Then: "'Love never faileth,'" said the Bishop gently.

But the Prioress had regained command over herself, and the gentle words were to her a challenge. She donned, forthwith, the breastplate of holy resolve, and drew her sword.

"My Lord Bishop, you have wrung from me a confession of my love; but in so doing, you have wrung from me a confession of sin. A nun may not yield to such love as Hugh d'Argent still desires to win from me. With long hours of prayer and vigil, have I sought to purge my soul from the stain of a weak yielding--even for 'a moment'--to the masterful insistence of this man, who forced himself, by the subterfuge of a sacrilegious masquerade, into the sacred precincts of our Nunnery. I know not whom he bribed"--continued the Prioress, flashing an indignant glance of suspicion at the Bishop.

"'Love thinking no evil,'" murmured Symon of Worcester.

"But I do know, that somebody in high authority must have connived at his plotting, or he could not have found himself alone in the crypt at the hour of Vespers, in such wise as to assume our dress and, mingling with the returning procession, gain entrance to the cloisters. And somebody must still be aiding and abetting his plans, or he could not be, as he himself told me he would be, daily in the crypt alone, during the hour when we pass to and from the clerestory. It angers me, my lord, to think that one who should, in this, be on my side, taketh part against me."

"'Is not easily provoked,'" quoted the Bishop.

"In fact I am tempted, my lord," said the Prioress, rising to her feet, tall and indignant, "I am almost tempted, my Lord Bishop, to forget the reverence which I owe to your high office----"

"'Doth not behave itself unseemly,'" murmured Symon of Worcester, putting on his biretta.

The Prioress turned her back upon the Bishop, and walked over to the window. She was so angry that she felt the tears stinging beneath her eyelids; yet at the same time she experienced a most incongruous desire to kneel down beside that beautiful and dignified figure, rest her head against the Bishop's knees, and pour out the cruel tale of conflicts, uncertainties and strivings, temptations and hard-won victories, which, had lately made up the sum of her nights and days. He had been her trusted friend and counsellor during all these years. Yet now she knew him arrayed against her, and she feared him more than she feared Hugh. Hugh wrestled with her feelings; and, on the plane of the senses, she knew her will would triumph. But the Bishop wrestled with her mentality; and behind his calm gentleness was a strength of intellect which, if she yielded at all, would seize and hold her, as steel fingers in a velvet glove.

She returned to her seat, composed but determined.

"Reverend Father," she said, "I pray you to pardon my too swift indignation. To you I look to aid me in this time of difficulty. I grieve for the sorrow and disappointment to a brave and noble knight, a loyal lover, and a most faithful heart. But I cannot reward faith with un-faith. If I broke my sacred vows in order to give myself to him, I should not bring a blessing to his home. Better an empty hearth than a hearth where broods a curse. Besides, we never could live down the scandal caused. I should be anathema to all. The Pope himself would doubtless excommunicate us. It would mean endless sorrow for me, and danger for Hugh. On these grounds, alone, it cannot be."

Then the Bishop drew from his sash a folded sheet of vellum.

"My daughter," he said, "when Hugh came to me with his grievous tale of treachery and loss, he refused to give me the name of the woman he sought, saying only that he believed she was to be found among the White Ladies of Worcester. When I asked her name he answered: 'Nay, I guard her name, as I would guard mine honour. If I fail to win her back; if she withhold herself from me, so that I ride away alone; then must I ride away leaving no shadow of reproach on her fair fame. Her name will be for ever in my heart,' said Hugh, 'but no word of mine shall have left it, in the mind of any man, linked with a broken troth or a forsaken lover.' I tell you this, my daughter, lest you should misjudge a very loyal knight.

"But no true lover was ever a diplomat. Hugh had not talked long with me, before you stood clearly revealed. A few careful questions settled the matter, beyond a doubt. Whereupon, my dear Prioress----"

The Bishop paused. It became suddenly difficult to proceed. The clear eyes of the Prioress were upon him.

"Whereupon, my lord?"

"Whereupon I realised--an early dream of mine seemed promised a possible fulfilment. I knew Hugh as a lad-- It is a veritable passion with me that all things should attain unto their full perfection-- In short, I sent a messenger to Rome, bearing a careful account of the whole matter, in a private letter from myself to His Holiness the Pope. Last evening, my messenger returned, bringing a letter from the Holy Father, with this enclosed."

The Bishop held out the folded document.

The Prioress rose, took it from him, and unfolded it.

As she read the opening lines, the amazement on her face quickly gathered into a frown.

"What!" she said. "The name and rank I resigned on entering this Order! Who dares to write or speak of me as 'Mora, Countess of Norelle'?"

"Merely His Holiness the Pope, and the Bishop of Worcester," said the Bishop meekly, in an undertone, not meaning the Prioress to hear; and, indeed, she ignored this answer, her words having been an angry ejaculation, rather than a question.

But there was worse to come.

"Dispensation!" exclaimed the Prioress.

"Absolution!" she cried, a little further on.

And at last, reading rapidly, in tones of uncontrollable anger and indignation: "'Empowers Symon, Lord Bishop of Worcester, or any priest he may appoint, to unite in the holy sacrament of marriage the Knight-Crusader, Hugh d'Argent, and Mora de Norelle, sometime Prioress of the White Ladies of Worcester.' _Sometime_ Prioress? In very truth, they have dared so to write it! SOMETIME Prioress! It will be well they should understand she is Prioress NOW--not some time or any time, but NOW and HERE!"

She turned upon the Bishop.

"My lord, the Church seems to be bringing its powers to bear on the side of the World, the Flesh, and the Devil, leaving a woman and her conscience to stand alone and battle unaided with the grim forces arrayed against her. But you shall see that she knows how to deal with any weapon of the adversary which happens to fall into her hands."

Upon which the Prioress rent the mandate from top to bottom, then across and again across; flung the pieces upon the floor, and set her foot upon them.

"Thus I answer," she cried, "your attempt, my lord, to induce the Pope to release me from vows which I hold to be eternally sacred and binding. And if you are bent upon divorcing a nun from her Heavenly Union, and making her to become the chattel of a man, you must seek her elsewhere than in the Convent of the White Ladies of Worcester, my Lord Bishop!"

So spoke the angry Prioress, making the quiet chamber to ring with her scorn and indignation.

The Bishop had made no attempt to prevent the tearing of the document. When she flung it upon the floor, placing her foot upon the fragments, he merely looked at them regretfully, and then back upon her face, back into those eyes which flamed on him in furious indignation. And in his own there was a look so sorrowful, so deeply wounded, and yet withal so tenderly understanding, that it quelled and calmed the anger of the Prioress.

Her eyes fell slowly, from the serene sadness of that quiet face, to the silver cross, studded with oriental amethysts, at his breast; to the sash girdling his purple cassock; to the hand resting on his knees; to the stone in his ring, from which the rich colour had faded, leaving it pale and clear, like a large teardrop on the Bishop's finger; to his shoes, with their strange Italian buckles; then along the floor to her own angry foot, treading upon the torn fragments of that precious document, procured, at such pains and cost, from His Holiness at Rome.

Then, suddenly, the Prioress faltered, weakened, fell upon her knees, with a despairing cry, clasped her hands upon the Bishop's knees, and laid her forehead upon them.

"Alas," she sobbed, "what have I done! In my pride and arrogance, I have spoken ill to you, my lord, who have ever shewn me most considerate kindness; and in a moment of ill-judged resentment, I have committed sacrilege against the Holy Father, rending the deed which bears his signature. Alas, woe is me! In striving to do right, I have done most grievous wrong; in seeking not to sin, lo, I have sinned beyond belief!"

The Prioress wept, her head upon her hands, clasped and resting upon the Bishop's knees.

Symon of Worcester laid his hand very gently upon that bowed head, and as he did so his eyes sought again the figure of the Christ upon the cross. The Prioress would have been startled indeed, had she lifted her head and seen those eyes--heretofore shrewd, searching, kindly, or twinkling and gay,--now full of an unfathomable pain. But, sobbing with her face hidden, the Prioress was conscious only of her own sufferings.

Presently the Bishop began to speak.

"We did not mean to overrule your judgment, or to force your inclination, my daughter. If we appear to have done so, the blame is mine alone. This mandate is drawn up entirely along the lines of my suggestion, owing to my influence with His Holiness, and based upon particulars furnished by me. Now let me read to you the private letter from the Holy Father to myself, giving further important conditions."

The Bishop drew forth and unfolded the letter from Rome, and very slowly, that each syllable might carry weight, he read it aloud.

As the gracious and kindly words fell upon the Prioress's ear, commanding that no undue pressure should be brought to bear upon her, and insisting that it must