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

thy jasper seat, dear faithful heart," he said; "for truly it was given unto thee to perceive and know what things thou oughtest to do, and also to have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same."

The peaceful face, growing beautiful with that solemn look of eternal youth which death brings, even to the aged, seemed to smile, as the precious parchment passed into the keeping of those folded hands.

The Bishop knelt long in prayer and thanksgiving. At length, with uplifted face, he said: "And grant, O my God, that I too may be faithful, unto the very end."

Then he rose, and rang the Convent bell.


CHAPTER XXXIX


THE "SPLENDID KNIGHT"

On the steps of Warwick Castle stood the Knight and his bride.

Their eyes still lingered on the archway through which the noble figure of Symon, Bishop of Worcester, mounted upon his black mare, Shulamite, had just disappeared from view.

The marriage had taken place in the Castle chapel, half an hour before, with an astonishing amount of pomp and ceremony. Priests and acolytes had appeared from unexpected places. Madonna lilies, on graceful stem, gleamed white in the shadows of the sacred place. Solemn music rose and fell; the deep roll of the Gregorian chants, beginning with a low hum as of giant bees in a vast field of clover; swelling, in full-throated unison, a majestic volume of sound which rang against the rafters, waking echoes in the clerestory; then rumbling back into silence.

Standing beneath the sacred canopy, the bridal pair lifted their eyes to the high altar and saw, amid a cloud of incense, the Bishop, in gorgeous vestments, descending the steps and coming toward them.

To Mora, at the time, and afterwards in most thankful remembrance, the wonder of that which followed lay in the fact that where she had dreaded an inevitable sense of sacrilege in giving to another that which had been already consecrated to God, the Bishop so worded the service as to make her feel that she could still be spiritually the bride of Christ, even while fulfilling her troth to Hugh; also that, in accepting the call to this new Vocation, she was not falling from her old estate, but rather rising above it.

As the words were spoken which made her a wife, it seemed as if the Bishop gently wrapped her about with a fresh mantle of dignity--that dignity which had fallen from her in those moments of humiliation when, at Hugh's bidding she laid herself down upon the stretcher.

The Bishop voiced the Church with a pomp and power which could not be withstood; and when, in obedience to his command Hugh grasped her right hand with his right hand, and the Bishop laid his own on either side of their clasped hands, and pronounced them man and wife, it seemed indeed as if a Divine touch united them, as if a Divine voice ratified their vows and sanctified their union.

Mora had never before seen the _man_ so completely merged in his high office.

And, when all was over, even as he mounted Shulamite and rode away, he rode out of the courtyard with the air of a Knight Templar riding forth-to do battle in a Holy War.

It seemed to Mora that she had bidden farewell to her old friend of the kindly smile, the merry eye, and the ready jest, in the early hours of that morning, as together they left the arbour of the golden roses.

There remained therefore but one man to be considered: the "splendid Knight" of old Antony's vision; the lover who had pursued her into her Nunnery; wooed her in her own cell, unabashed by the dignity of her office; mastered her will; forced her numbed heart to awaken, disturbed by the thrill of an unwilling tenderness; moved her to passion by the poignant anguish of a parting, which she regarded as inevitably final; won the Bishop over, to his side, and, through him, the Pope; and finally, by the persistence of his pleadings, moved our blessed Lady to vouchsafe a vision on his behalf.

This was the "splendid Knight" against whom the stars in their courses had most certainly not fought. Principalities and powers had all been for him; against him, just a woman and her conscience, and--he had won.

When, at their first interview in her cell, in reply to her demand: "Why are you not with your wife?" he had answered: "I _am_ with my wife; the only wife I have ever wanted, the only woman I shall ever wed, is here"--she stood ready to strike with ivory and steel, at the first attempt upon her inviolable chastity, and could afford to smile, in pitying derision, at so empty a boast.

But now? If he said: "My wife is here," and chose to seize her with possessive grasp, she must meekly fold her hands upon her breast, and say: "Even so, my lord. I am yours. Deal with me as you will."

As the Bishop's purple cloak and the hind quarters of his noble black mare, disappeared from view, the crowd which hitherto had surrounded the bridal pair, also vanished, as if at the wave of a magic wand. Thus for the first time, since those tense moments in the Cathedral crypt, Mora found herself alone with Hugh.

She was not young enough to be embarrassed; but she was old enough to be afraid; afraid of him, and afraid of herself; afraid of his masterful nature and imperious will, which had always inclined to break rather than bend anything which stood in his way; and afraid of something in herself which leapt up in response to this fierce strength in him, yearning to be mastered, hungry to yield, wishful to obey; yet which, if yielded to, would lay her spirit in the dust, and turn the awakened tenderness in her heart to scorn of herself, and anger against him.

So she feared as she stood in the sunshine, watching the now empty archway through which her sole remaining link with Convent life had vanished; conscious, without looking round, that Debbie, who had been curtseying behind her, was there no longer; that Martin Goodfellow, who had held Shulamite's bridle while the Bishop mounted, had disappeared in one direction, the rest of the men in another; intensely conscious that she and Hugh were now alone; and fearing, she shivered again, as she had shivered in the crypt; then, of a sudden, knew that she had done so, and, with a swift impulse of shame and contrition, turned and looked at Hugh.

He was indeed the "splendid Knight" of Mary Antony's vision! He had donned for his bridal the dress of white and silver, which he had last put on when he supped at the Palace with the Bishop. This set off, with striking effect, his dark head and the noble beauty of his countenance; and Mora, who chiefly remembered him as a handsome youth, graceful and gay, realised for the first time his splendour as a man, and the change wrought in him by all he had faced, endured, and overcome.

In the crypt, the day before, and during the hours which followed, she had scarce let herself look at him; and he, though always close beside her, had kept out of her immediate range of vision.

Since that infolding clasp in the crypt when he had flung the cloak about her, not once had he touched her, until the Church just now bade him, with authority, to take her right hand, with his.

Her mind flew back to the happenings of the previous day. With the lightning rapidity of retrospective thought, she passed again through each experience from the moment when the call of the blackbird sounded in the crypt. The helpless horror of being lifted by unseen hands; the slow, swinging progress, to the accompaniment of the measured tread of the men-at-arms; the stifling darkness, air and light shut out by the heavy cloak, and yet the clear consciousness of the moment when the stretcher passed from the Cathedral into the sunshine without; the sudden pause, as the Bishop met the stretcher, and then--as she lay helpless between them--Symon's question and Hugh's reply, with their subtlety of hidden meaning, which filled her with impotent anger, shewing as it did the completeness of the Bishop's connivance at Hugh's conspiracy. Then Hugh's request, and the Bishop's hand laid upon her, the Bishop's voice uplifted in blessing. Then once again the measured tramp, tramp, and the steady swing of the stretcher; but now the men's heels rang on cobbles, and voices seemed everywhere; cheery greetings, snatches of song, chance words concerning a bargain or a meeting, a light jest, a coarse oath; and, all the while, the steady, tramp, tramp, and the ring of Hugh's spurs.

She grew faint and it seemed to her she was about to die beneath the cloak, and that when at length Hugh removed it, it would prove a pall beneath which he would find a dead bride.

"Dead bride! Dead bride!" sounded the tramping footsteps. And all the way she was haunted by the belief, assailing her confused senses in the darkness, that the spirit of Father Gervaise had met the stretcher; that his was the voice which murmured low and tenderly; "Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed. Go in peace."

With this had come a horror of the outer world, a wild desire for the safety and shelter of the Cloister, and an absolute physical dread of the moment when the covering cloak should be removed, and she would find herself alone with her lover; and, on rising from the stretcher, be seized by his arms.

Yet when, having been tilted up steps, she was conscious of the silence of passages and soon the even more complete quiet of a room; when the stretcher was set down, and the bearers' feet died away, Hugh's deep voice said gently: "Change thy garments quickly, my beloved. There is no time to lose." But he laid no hand upon the cloak, and his footsteps, also, died away.

Then pushing back the heavy folds and sitting up, she had found herself alone in a bedchamber, everything she could need laid ready to her hand; while, upon the bed, lay her green riding-dress, discarded forever, eight years before!

Her mind refused to look back upon the half-hour that followed.

She saw herself next appearing in the doorway at the top of a flight of eight steps, leading down into the yard of the hostelry, where a cavalcade of men and horses waited; while Icon, the Bishop's beautiful white palfrey, was being led to and fro, and Hugh stood with an open letter in his hand.

As she hesitated in the doorway, gazing down upon the waiting, restive crowd, Hugh looked up and saw her. Into his eyes flashed a light of triumphant joy, of adoring love and admiration. She had avoided looking at her own reflection; but his face, as he came up the steps, mirrored her loveliness. It had cost her such anguish of soul to divest herself of her sacred habit and don these gay garments belonging to a life long left behind, that his evident delight in the change, moved her to an unreasonable resentment. Also that sudden blaze of love in his dark eyes, dazzled her heart, even as a burst of sunshine might dazzle one used to perpetual twilight.

She took the Bishop's letter, with averted eyes; read it; then moved swiftly down the steps to where Icon