The White Ladies of Worcester: A Romance of the Twelfth Century

"Mora, not long ago a wondrous tale was told me of a man's great love for thee—a man, nobler than I, in that he mastered all selfish desires; a love higher than mine, in that it put thy welfare, in all things, first. Hearing this tale, I failed both myself and thee, for I said: 'I pray heaven that, if she come to me, she may never know that she once won the love of so greatly better a man than I.' But, since I clasped thy hand in mine, and the Bishop, laying his on either side, gave thee to be my wife, I have known there would be no peace for me if I feared to trust thee with this knowledge, because that the man who loved thee was a better man than the man who, by God's mercy and our Lady's grace, has won thee."

As the Knight spoke thus, the grey eyes fixed on his face grew wide with wonder; soft, with a great compunction; yet, at the corners, shewed a little crinkle in which the Bishop would instantly have recognised the sign of approaching merriment.

Was this then a sample of the unknown sins of men? Nothing here, surely, to cause the least throb of apprehension, even to the heart of a nun! But what strange tale had reached the ears of this most dear and loyal Knight? She leaned a little nearer to him, speaking in a tone which was music to his heart.

"Dear Knight of mine," she said, "no tale of a man's love for me can have been a true one. Yet am I glad that, deeming it true, and feeling as it was your first impulse to feel, you now tell me quite frankly what you felt, thus putting from yourself all sense of wrong, while giving me the chance to say to you, that none more noble than this faithful Knight can have loved me; for, saving a few Court pages, mostly popinjays, and Humphry of Camforth, of whom the less said the better, no other man hath loved me."

More kindly she looked on him than she yet had looked. She leaned across the table.

By reaching out his arms he could have caught her lovely face between his hands.

Her eyes were merry. Her lips smiled.

Greatly tempted was the Knight to agree that, saving himself, and Humphry of Camforth, of whom the less said the better, none save Court popinjays had loved her. Yet in his heart he knew that ever between them would be this fact of his knowledge of the love of Father Gervaise for her, and of the noble renunciation inspired by that love. He had no intention of betraying the Bishop; but Mora's own explanation, making it quite clear that she would not be likely to suspect the identity of the Bishop with his supposed cousin, Father Gervaise, seemed to the Knight to remove the one possible reason for concealment. He was willing to risk present loss, rather than imperil future peace.

With an effort which made his voice almost stern: "The tale was a true one," he said.

She drew back, regarding him with grave eyes, her hands folded before her.

"Tell me the tale," she said, "and I will pronounce upon its truth."

"Years ago, Mora, when you were a young maiden at the Court, attending on the Queen, you were most deeply loved by one who knew he could never ask you in marriage. That being so, so noble was his nature and so unselfish his love, that he would not give himself the delight of seeing you, nor the enjoyment of your friendship, lest, being so strong a thing, his love—even though unexpressed—should reach and stir your heart to a response which, might hinder you from feeling free to give yourself, when a man who could offer all sought to win you. Therefore, Mora, he left the Court, he left the country. He went to foreign lands. He thought not of himself. He desired for you the full completion which comes by means of wedded love. He feared to hinder this. So he went."

Her face still expressed incredulous astonishment.

"His name?" she demanded, awaiting the answer with parted lips, and widely-open eyes.

"Father Gervaise," said the Knight.

He saw her slowly whiten, till scarce a vestige of colour remained.

For some minutes she spoke no word; both sat silent, Hugh ruefully facing his risks, and inclined to repent of his honesty.

At length: "And who told you this tale," she said; "this tale of the love of Father Gervaise for a young maid, half his age?"

"Symon of Worcester told it me, three nights ago."

"How came the Bishop to know so strange and so secret a thing? And knowing it, how came he to tell it to you?"

"He had it from Father Gervaise himself. He told it to me, because his remembrance of the sacrifice made so long ago in order that the full completion of wifehood and motherhood might be thine, had always inclined him to a wistful regret over thy choice of the monastic life, with its resultant celibacy; leading him, from the first, to espouse and further my cause. In wedding us to-day, methinks the Bishop felt he was at last securing the consummation of the noble renunciation made so long ago by Father Gervaise."

With a growing dread at his heart, Hugh watched the increasing pallor of her face, the hard line of the lips which, but a few moments before, had parted in such gentle sweetness.

"Alas!" he exclaimed, "I should not have told thee! With my clumsy desire to keep nothing from thee, I have spoilt an hour which else might have been so perfect."

"You did well to tell me, dear Knight of mine," she said, a ripple of tenderness passing across her stern face, as swiftly and gently as the breeze stirs a cornfield. "Nor is there anything in this world so perfect as the truth. If the truth opened an abyss which plunged me into hell, I would sooner know it, than attempt to enter Paradise across the flimsy fabric of a lie!"

Her voice, as she uttered these words, had in it the ring which was wont to petrify wrong-doers of the feebler kind among her nuns.

"Dear Knight, had the Bishop not forestalled me when he named his palfrey, truly I might have found a fine new name for you! But now, I pray you of your kindness, leave me alone with my fallen image for a little space, that I may gather up the fragments and give them decent burial."

With which her courage broke. She stretched her clasped hands across the table and laid her head upon her arms.

Despair seized the Knight as he stood helpless, looking down upon that proud head laid low.

He longed to lay his hand upon the golden softness of her hair.

But her shoulders shook with a hard, tearless sob, and the Knight fled from the arbour.

As he paced the lawn, on which the Bishop had promenaded the evening before, Hugh cursed his rashness in speaking; yet knew, in the heart of his heart, that he could not have done otherwise. Mora's words concerning truth, gave him a background of comfort. Even so had he ever himself felt. But would it prove that his honesty had indeed shattered his chances of happiness, and hers?

A new name? . . . What might it be? . . . What the mischief, had the Bishop named his palfrey? . . . Sheba? Nay, that was the ass! Solomon? Nay, that was the mare! Yet—how came a mare to be named Solomon?

In his disturbed mental state it irritated him unreasonably that a mare should be called after a king with seven hundred wives! Then he remembered "black, but comely," and arrived at the right name, Shulamite. Of course! Not Solomon but Shulamite. He had read that love-poem of the unnamed Eastern shepherd, with the Rabbi in the mountain fastness. The Rabbi had pointed out that the word used in that description signified "sunburned." The lovely Shulamite maiden, exposed to the Eastern sun while tending her kids and keeping the vineyards, had tanned a ruddy brown, beside which the daughters of Jerusalem, enclosed in King Solomon's scented harem, looked pale as wilting lilies. Remembering the glossy coat of the black mare, Hugh wondered, with a momentary sense of merriment, whether the Bishop supposed the maiden of the "Song of Songs" to have been an Ethiopian.

Then he remembered "Iconoklastes." Yes, surely! The palfrey was Iconoklastes. Now wherefore gave the Bishop such a name to his white palfrey?

Striding blindly about the lawn, of a sudden the Knight stepped full on to a flower-bed. At once he seemed to hear the Bishop's gentle voice: "I named him Iconoklastes because he trampled to ruin some flower-beds on which I spent much time and care, and of which I was inordinately fond."

Ah! . . . That was it! The destroyer of fair bloom and blossom, of buds of promise; of the loveliness of a tended garden. . . . Was this then what he seemed to Mora? He, who had forced her to yield to the insistence of his love? . . . In her chaste Convent cell, she could have remained true to this Ideal love of her girlhood: and, now that she knew it to have been called forth by love, could have received, mentally, its full fruition. Also, in time she might have discovered the identity of the Bishop with Father Gervaise, and long years of perfect friendship might have proved a solace to their sundered hearts, had not he—the trampler upon flower-beds—rudely intervened.

And yet—Mora had been betrothed to him, her love had been his, long after Father Gervaise had left the land.

How could he win her back to be once more as she was when they parted on the castle battlements eight years before?

How could he free himself, and her, from these intangible, ecclesiastical entanglements?

He was reminded of his difficulties when he tried to walk disguised in the dress of the White Ladies, and found his stride impeded by those trailing garments. He remembered the relief of wrenching them off, and stepping clear.

Why not now take the short, quick road to mastery?

But instantly that love which seeketh not its own, the strange new sense so recently awakened in him, laid its calm touch upon his throbbing heart. Until that moment in the crypt the day before, he had loved Mora for his own delight, sought her for his own joy. Now, he knew that he could take no happiness at the cost of one pang to her.

"She must be taught not to shudder," cried the masterfulness which was his by nature.

"She must be given no cause to shudder," amended this new, loyal tenderness, which now ruled his every thought of her.

Presently, returning to the arbour, he found her seated, her elbows on the table, her chin cupped in her hands.

She had been weeping; yet her smile of welcome, as he entered, held a quality he had scarce expected.

He spoke straight to the point. It seemed the only way to step clear of immeshing trammels.

"Mora, it cuts me to the heart that, in striving to be honest with you, I have all unwittingly trampled upon those flower-beds in which you long had tended fair blossoms of memory. Also I fear this knowledge of a nobler love, makes it hard for you to contemplate life linked to a love which seems to you less able for self-sacrifice."

She gazed at him, wide-eyed, in sheer amazement.

"Dear Knight," she said, "true, I am disillusioned, but not in aught that concerns you. You trampled on no flower-beds of mine. My shattered idol is the image of one whom I, with deepest reverence, loved, as a nun might love her Guardian Angel. To learn that he loved me as a man loves a woman, and that he had to flee before that love, lest it should harm me and himself, changes the hallowed memory of years. This morning, three names stood to me for all that is highest, noblest, best: Father Gervaise, Symon of Worcester, and Hugh d'Argent. Now, the Bishop and yourself alone are left. Fail me not, Hugh, or I shall be bereft indeed."

The Knight laughed, joyously. The relief at his heart demanded that much vent. "Then, if I failed thee, Mora, there would be but the Bishop?"

"There would be but the Bishop."

"I will not fail thee, my belovèd. And I fear I must have put the matter clumsily, concerning Father Gervaise. As the Bishop told it to me, there was naught that was not noble. It seemed to me it should be sweet to the heart of a woman to be so loved."

"Hush," she said, sternly. "You know not the heart of a nun."

He did not reason further. It was enough for him to know that the shattered image she had buried was not the ideal of his love and hers, or the hope of future happiness together.

"Time flies, dear Heart," he said. "May I speak to thee of immediate plans?"

"I listen," she answered.

Hugh stood in the entrance, among the yellow roses, leaning against the doorpost, his arms folded on his breast, his feet crossed.

At once she was reminded of the scene in her cell, when he had taken up that attitude while still garbed as a nun, and she had said: "I know you for a man," and, in her heart had added: "And a stronger man, surely, than Mary Seraphine's Cousin Wilfred!"

"We ride on to-day," said the Knight, "if you feel able for a few hours in the saddle, to the next stage in our journey. It is a hostel in the forest; a poor kind of place, I fear; but there is one good room where you can be made comfortable, with Mistress Deborah. I shall sleep on the hay, without, amongst my men. Some must keep guard all night. We ride through wild parts to reach our destination."

He paused. He could not hold on to the matter of fact tones in which he had started. When he spoke again, his voice was low and very tender.

"Mora, I am taking thee first to thine own home; to the place where, long years ago, we loved and parted. There, all is as it was. Thy people who loved thee and had fled, have been found and brought back. Seven days of journeying should bring us there. I have sent men on before, to arrange for each night's lodging, and make sure that all is right. Arrived at thine own castle, Mora, we shall be within three hours' ride of mine—that home to which I hope to bring thee. Until we enter there, my wife, although this morning most truly wed, we will count ourselves but betrothed. Once in thy home, it shall be left to thine own choice to come to mine when and how thou wilt. The step now taken—that of leaving the Cloister and coming to me—had perforce to be done quickly, if done at all. But, now it is safely accomplished, there is no further need for haste. The wings of my swift desire shall be dipt to suit thine inclination."

Hugh paused, looking upon her with a half-wistful smile. She made no answer; so presently he continued.

"I have planned that, each day, Mistress Deborah, with the baggage and a good escort, shall go by the most direct route, and the best road. Thus thou and I will be free to ride as we will, visiting places we have known of old and which it may please thee to see again. To-day we can ride out by Kenilworth, and so on our first stage northward. Martin will take Mistress Deborah on a pillion behind him. Should she weary of travelling so, she can have a seat in the cart with the baggage. But they tell me she travels bravely on horseback. We will send them on ahead of us, and on arrival all will be in readiness for thee. If this weather holds, we shall ride each day through a world of sunshine and beauty; and each day's close, my wife, will find us one day nearer home. Does this please thee? Have I thought of all?"

Rising, she came and stood beside him in the entrance to the arbour.

A golden rose, dipping from above, rested against her hair.

Her eyes were soft with tears.

"So perfectly have you thought and planned, dear faithful Knight, that I think our blessèd Lady must have guided you. As we ride out into the sunshine, I shall grow used to the great world once more; and you will have patience and will teach me things I have perhaps forgot."

She hesitated; half put out her hands; but his not meeting them, folded them on her breast.

"Hugh, it seems hard that I should clip your splendid wings; but—oh, Hugh! Think you the heart of a nun can ever become again as the heart of other women?"

"Heaven forbid!" said the Knight, fervently, thinking of Eleanor and Alfrida.

And, as leaving the arbour they walked together over the lawn, she smiled, remembering, how that morning the Bishop had answered the same question in precisely the same words. Whatever Father Gervaise might have said, the Bishop and the Knight were agreed!

Yet she wished, somewhat wistfully, that this most dear and loyal Knight had taken her hands when she held them out.

She would have liked to feel the strong clasp of his upon them.

Possibly our Lady, who knoweth the heart of a woman, had guided the Knight in this matter also.

CHAPTER XLI

WHAT THE BISHOP REMEMBERED

Symon, Bishop of Worcester, sat in his library, in the cool of the day.

He was weary, with a weariness which surpassed all his previous experience of weariness, all his imaginings as to how weary, in body and spirit, a man could be, yet continue to breathe and think.

With some, extreme fatigue leads to restlessness of body. Not so with the Bishop. The more tired he was, the more perfectly still he sat; his knees crossed, his elbows on the arms of his chair, the fingers of both hands pressed lightly together, his head resting against the high back of the chair, his gaze fixed upon the view across the river.

As he looked with unseeing eyes upon the wide stretch of meadow, the distant woods and the soft outline of the Malvern hills, he was thinking how good it would be never again to leave this quiet room; never to move from this chair; never again to see a human being; never to have to smile when he was heart-sick, or to bow when he felt ungracious!

Those who knew the Bishop best, often spoke together of his wondrous vitality and energy, their favourite remark being: that he was never tired. They might with more truth have said that they had never known him to appear tired.

It had long been a rule in the Bishop's private code, that weariness, either of body or spirit, must not be shewn to others. The more tired he was, the more ready grew his smile, the more alert his movements, the more gracious his response to any call upon his sympathy or interest.

He never sighed in company, as did Father Peter when, having supped too well off jolly of salmon, roast venison, and raisin pie, he was fain to let indigestion pass muster for melancholy.

He never yawned in Council, either gracefully behind his hand, as did the lean Spanish Cardinal; or openly and unashamed, as did the round and rosy Abbot of Evesham, displaying to the fascinated gaze of the brethren in stalls opposite, a cavernous throat, a red and healthy tongue, and a particularly fine set of teeth.

Moreover the Bishop would as soon have thought of carrying a garment from the body of a plague-stricken patient into the midst of a family of healthy children, as of entering an assemblage with a jaded countenance or a languorous manner.

Therefore: "He is never weary," said his friends.

"He knoweth not the meaning of fatigue," agreed his acquaintances.

"There is no merit in labour which is not in anywise a burden, but, rather, a delight," pronounced those who envied his powers.

"He is possessed," sneered his enemies, "by a most energetic demon!

Were that demon exorcised, the Bishop would collapse, exhausted."

"He is filled," said his admirers, "by the Spirit of God, and is thus so energized that he can work incessantly, without experiencing ordinary human weakness."

And none knew that it was a part of his religion to Symon of Worcester, to hide his weariness from others.

Yet once when, in her chamber, he sat talking with the Prioress, she had risen, of a sudden, saying: "You are tired, Father. Rest there in silence, while I work at my missal."

She had passed to the table; and the Bishop had sat resting, just as he was sitting now, save that his eyes could then dwell on her face, as she bent, absorbed, over the illumination.

After a while he had asked: "How knew you that I was tired, my dear Prioress?"

Without lifting her eyes, she had made answer: "Because, my Lord Bishop, you twice smiled when there was no occasion for smiling."

Another period of restful silence, while she worked, and he watched her working. Then he had remarked: "My friends say I am never tired."

And she had answered: "They would speak more truly if they said that you are ever brave."

It had amazed the Bishop to find himself thus understood. Moreover he could scarce put on his biretta, so crowned was his head by the laurels of her praise. Also this had been the only time when he had wondered whether the Prioress really believed Father Gervaise to be at the bottom of the ocean. It is ever an astonishment to a man when the unerring intuition of a woman is brought to bear upon himself.

Now, in this hour of his overwhelming fatigue, he recalled that scene. Closing his eyes on the distant view, and opening them upon the enchanted vistas of memory, he speedily saw that calm face, with its chastened expression of fine self-control, bending above the page she was illuminating. He saw the severe lines of the wimple, the folds of the flowing veil, the delicate movement of the long fingers, and—yes!—resting upon her bosom the jewelled cross, sign of her high office.

Thus looking back, he vividly recalled the extraordinary restfulness of sitting there in silence, while she worked. No words were needed. Her very presence, and the fact that she knew him to be weary, rested him.

He looked again. But now the folds of the wimple and veil were gone.

A golden circlet clasped the shining softness of her hair.

The Bishop opened tired eyes, and fixed them once again upon the landscape.

He supposed the long rides on two successive days had exhausted him physically; and the strain of securing and ensuring the safety and happiness of the woman who was dearer to him than life, had reacted now in a mental lassitude which seemed unable to rise up and face the prospect of the lonely years to come.

The thought of her as now with the Knight, did not cause him suffering. His one anxiety was lest anything unforeseen should arise, to prevent the full fruition of their happiness.

He had never loved her as a man loves the woman he would wed;—at least, if that side of his love had attempted to arise, it had instantly been throttled and flung back.

It seemed to him that, from the very beginning he had ever loved her as Saint Joseph must have loved the maiden intrusted to his keeping—his, yet not his; called, in the inspired dream, "Mary, thy wife"; but so called only that he might have the right to guard and care for her—she who was shrine of the Holiest, o'ershadowed by the power of the Highest; Mother of God, most blessèd Virgin forever.

It seemed to the Bishop that his joy in watching over Mora, since his appointment to the See of Worcester, had been such as Saint Joseph could well have understood; and now he had accomplished the supreme thing; and, in so doing, had left himself desolate.

On the afternoon of the previous day, so soon as the body of the old lay-sister had been removed from the Prioress's cell, the Bishop had gathered together all those things which Mora specially valued and which she had asked him to secure for her; mostly his gifts to her.

The Sacramentaries, from which she so often made copies and translations, now lay upon his table.

His tired eyes dwelt upon them. How often he had watched the firm white fingers opening those heavy clasps, and slowly turning the pages.

The books remained; yet her presence was gone.

His weary brain repeated, over and over, this obvious fact; then began a hypothetical reversal of it. Supposing the books had gone, and her presence had remained? . . . Presently a catalogue formed itself in his mind of all those things which might have gone, unmissed, unmourned, if her dear presence had remained. . . . Before long the Palace . . . the City . . . the Cathedral itself . . . all had swelled the list. . . . He was alone with Mora and the sunset; . . . and the battlements of glory were the radiant walls of heaven; . . . and soon he and she were walking up old Mary Antony's golden stair together. . . .

Hush! . . . "So He giveth His belovèd sleep."

* * * * * *

The Bishop had but just returned from laying to rest, in the burying-ground of the Convent, the worn-out body of the aged lay-sister.

When he had signified that he intended himself to perform the last rites, Mother Sub-Prioress had ventured upon amazed expostulation.

Such an honour had never, in the history of the Community, been accorded even to the Canonesses, much less to a lay-sister. Surely Father Peter—or the Prior? Had it been the Prioress herself, why then–

Few can remember the petrifying effect of a flash of sudden anger in the kindly eyes of Symon of Worcester. Mother Sub-Prioress will never forget it.