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

floor, or moving from one window to another.

By dint of hard riding he had reached Warwick while the sun, though already dipped beneath the horizon, still flecked the sky with rosy clouds, and spread a golden mantle over the west.

The lord of the Castle was away, in attendance on the King; but all was in readiness for the arrival of the Bishop, and great preparations had been made for the reception of Sir Hugh d'Argent. His people, having left Worcester early that morning, were about in the courtyard, as the Bishop rode in.

As he passed through the doorway, an elderly woman, buxom, comely, and of motherly aspect, whom he easily divined to be the tire-woman of whom the Knight had spoken, came forward to meet him.

"Good my lord," she said, her eagerness allowing of scant ceremony, "comes Sir Hugh d'Argent hither this night?"

"Aye," replied the Bishop, looking with kindly eyes upon Mora's old nurse. "Within two hours, he should be here."

"Comes he alone, my lord?" asked Mistress Deborah.

"Nay," replied the Bishop, "the Countess of Norelle, a very noble lady to whom the Knight is betrothed, rides hither with him."

"The saints be praised!" exclaimed the old woman, and turned away to hide her tears.

Whilst his body-servant prepared a bath and laid out his robes, the Bishop mounted to the ramparts and watched the gold fade in the west. He glanced at the river below, threading its way through the pasture land; at the billowy masses of trees; at the gay parterre, bright with summer flowers. Then he looked long in the direction of the city from which he had come.

During his strenuous ride, the slow tramp of the men-at-arms, had sounded continually in his ears; the outline of that helpless figure, lying at full length upon the stretcher, had been ever before his eyes.

He could not picture the arrival at the hostel, the removal of the covering, the uprising of the Prioress to face life anew, enfolded in the arms of her lover.

As in a weary dream, in which the mind can make no headway, but returns again and yet again to the point of distress, so, during the entire ride, the Bishop had followed that stretcher through the streets of Worcester city, until it seemed to him as if, before the pall was lifted, the long-limbed, graceful form beneath it would have stiffened in death.

"A corpse for a bride! A corpse for a bride!" the hoofs of the black mare Shulamite had seemed to beat out upon the road. "Alas, poor Knight! A corpse for a bride!"

The Bishop came down from the battlements.

When he left his chamber an hour later, he had donned those crimson robes which he wore on the evening when the Knight supped with him at the Palace.

As he paced up and down the lawns, the gold cross at his breast gleamed in the evening light.

A night-hawk, flying high overhead and looking downward as it flew, might have supposed that a great scarlet poppy had left its clump in the flower-beds, and was promenading on the turf.

A steward came out to ask when it would please the Lord Bishop to sup.

To the hovering hawk, a blackbird seemed to have hopped out, confronting and arresting the promenading poppy.

The Bishop said he would await the arrival of Sir Hugh; but he turned and followed the man into the Castle.

And now he sat in the great hall chamber.

Two hours had passed since his arrival.

Unless something unforeseen had occurred the Knight's cavalcade must be here before long. He had planned to start within the hour; and, though the Bishop had ridden fast, they could scarcely have taken more than an hour longer to do the distance.

But supposing the Prioress had faltered at the last, and had besought to be returned to the Nunnery? Would the chivalry of the Knight have stood such a test? And, having left in secret, how could she return openly? Would the way through the crypt be possible?

The Bishop began to wish that he had ridden to the Star hostel and awaited developments there, instead of hastening on before.

The hall chamber was in the centre of the Castle. Its casements looked out upon the gardens. Thus it came about that he did not hear a cavalcade ride into the courtyard. He did not hear the shouting of the men, the ring of hoofs on the paving stones, the champing of horses.

He sat in a great carved chair beside the fireplace in the hall chamber, forcing himself to stillness, yet tormented by anxiety; half minded to order a fresh horse and to ride back to Worcester.

Suddenly, without any warning, the door, leading from the ante-chamber at the further end of the hall, opened.

Framed in the doorway appeared a vision, which for a moment led Symon of Worcester to question whether he dreamed, so beautiful beyond belief was the woman in a green riding-dress, looking at him with starry eyes, her cheeks aglow, a veil of golden hair falling about her shoulders.

_Oh, Mora, child of delight! Has the exquisite promise of thy girlhood indeed fulfilled itself thus? Have the years changed thee so little---and yet so greatly?_

_"The captive exile hasteneth"; exile, long ago, for thy sake; seeking to be free, yet captive still, caught once and forever in the meshes of that golden hair._

_Oh, Mora, child of delight! Must all this planning for thy full development and perfecting of joy, involve the poignant anguish of thus seeing thee again?_

Symon of Worcester rose and stood, a noble figure in crimson and gold, at the top of the hall. But for the silver moonlight of his hair, he might have been a man in his prime--so erect was his carriage, so keen and bright were his eyes.

The tall woman in the doorway gave a little cry; then moved quickly forward.

"You?" she said. "You! The priest who is to wed us? You!"

He stood his ground, awaiting her approach.

"Yes, I," he said; "I."

Half-way across the hall, she paused.

"No," she said, as if to herself. "I dream. It is not Father Gervaise. It is the Bishop."

She drew nearer.

Earnestly he looked upon her, striving to see in her the Prioress of Whytstone--the friend of all these happy, peaceful, blessed years.

But the Prioress had vanished.

Mora de Norelle stood before him, taller by half a head than he, flushed by long galloping in the night breeze; nerves strung to breaking point; eyes bright with the great unrest of a headlong leap into a new world. Yet the firm sweet lips were there, unchanged; and, even as he marked them, they quivered and parted.

"Reverend Father," she said, "I have chosen, even as you prayed I might do, the harder part." She flung aside the riding-whip she carried; and folding her hands, held them up before him. "For Christ's sake, my Lord Bishop, pray for me!"

He took those folded hands in his, gently parted them, and held them against the cross upon his heart.

"You have chosen rightly, my child," he said; "we will pray that grace and strength may be vouchsafed you, so that you may continue, without faltering, along the pathway of this fresh vocation."

She looked at him with searching gaze. The kind and gentle eyes of the Bishop met hers without wavering; also without any trace of the fire--the keen brightness--which had startled her as she stood in the doorway.

"Reverend Father," she said, and there was a strange note of bewildered question in her voice: "I pray you, tell me what you bid penitents to remember as they kneel in prayer before the crucifix?"

The Bishop looked full into those starry grey eyes bent upon him, and his own did not falter. His mild voice took on a shade of sternness as befitted the solemn subject of her question.

"I tell them, my daughter, to remember, the sacred Wounds that bled and the Heart that broke for them."

She drew her hands from beneath his, and stepped back a pace.

"The Heart that broke?" she said. "That _broke_? Do hearts break?" she cried. "Nay, rather, they turn to stone." She laughed wildly, then caught her breath. The Knight had entered the hall.

With free, glad step, and head uplifted, Hugh d'Argent came to them, where they stood.

"My Lord Bishop," he said, "you have been too good to us. I sent Mora on alone that she might find you here, not telling her who was the prelate who had so graciously offered to wed us, knowing how much it would mean to her that it should be you, Reverend Father."

"Gladly am I here for that purpose, my son," replied the Bishop, "having as you know, the leave and sanction of His Holiness for so doing. Shall we proceed at once to the chapel, or do you plan first to sup?"

"Nay, Father," said the Knight. "My betrothed has ridden far and needs food first, and then a good night's rest. If it will not too much delay your return to Worcester, I would pray you to wed us in the morning."

Knowing how determined Hugh had been, in laying his plans, to be wed at once on reaching Warwick, the Bishop looked up quickly, wishing to understand what had wrought this change.

He saw on the Knight's face that look of radiant peace which the Prioress had seen, when first the cloak was turned back in the crypt; and the Bishop, having passed that way himself, knew that to Hugh had come the revelation which comes but to the true, lover--the deepest of all joys, that of putting himself on one side, and of thinking, first and only, of the welfare of the beloved.

And seeing this, the Bishop let go his fears, and in his heart thanked God.

"It is well planned, Hugh," he said. "I am here until the morning."

At which the Knight turning, strode quickly to the door, and beckoned.

Then back he came, leading by the hand the buxom, motherly old dame, seen on arrival by the Bishop. Who, when the Lady Mora saw, she gave a cry, and ran to meet her.

"Debbie!" she cried, "Oh, Debbie! Let us go home!"

And with that the tension broke all on a sudden, and with her old nurse's arms around her, she sobbed on the faithful bosom which had been the refuge of her childhood's woes.

"There, my pretty!" said Deborah, as best she could for her own sobs. "There, there! We are at home, now we are together. Come and see the chamber in which we shall sleep, just as we slept long years ago, when you were a babe, my dear."

So, with her old nurse's arms about her, she, who had come in so proudly, went gently out in a soft mist of tears.

The Bishop turned away.

"Love never faileth," he murmured, half aloud.

Hugh turned with him, and laughed; but in his laughter there was no vexation, no bitterness, no unrest. It was the happy laugh of a heart aglow with a hope amounting to certainty.