The Well in the Desert

By Emily Sarah Holt

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Title: The Well in the Desert
       An Old Legend of the House of Arundel

Author: Emily Sarah Holt

Illustrator: M. Irwin

Release Date: October 20, 2007 [EBook #23122]

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WELL IN THE DESERT ***




Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




The Well in the Desert, An Old Legend of the House of Arundel, by Emily
Sarah Holt.

________________________________________________________________________
The action takes place at the end of the fourteenth century and the
start of the fifteenth.  It deals largely with a family connected with
Arundel in Sussex.  They seem to have been rather nasty people, highly
motivated by greed and desire for even higher stations in life.  They
were fairly well-placed by today's standards, being closely related to
various of the Kings of England of the day.  Some of the women in the
story are quite as bad as many of the men.

When these wicked people had done their wicked deeds there were often
unfortunate children, dispossessed or forgotten in some attic of the
castle.  One of these is the heroine of this story.  She had never been
told who or where her mother was.  By a series of coincidences she
comes across the name of a person who may know the answers to these
questions.  I will not spoil the story for you by telling you any more.

Throughout the book there is constant reference to Christ as the Well,
the supplier of the vital Water of Life.  Christianity was in a terrible
mess at the time, with numerous sects, and with the members of any one
sect feeling free to execute by any means the members of any other sect.
There's plainly a modern parallel here.

On the whole the story is based on fact and on valuable contemporary
records.  When Miss Holt wrote the story it seemed likely that Philippa,
the central figure, was accurately represented.  Unfortunately, after
the book was complete it was found that she could never have existed,
so the poor authoress had to present her book as it stands, with an
apology at the end.

________________________________________________________________________
THE WELL IN THE DESERT, AN OLD LEGEND OF THE HOUSE OF ARUNDEL, BY EMILY
SARAH HOLT.



PREFACE.

It is said that only travellers in the arid lands of the East really
know the value of water.  To them the Well in the Desert is a treasure
and a blessing: unspeakably so, when the water is pure and sweet; yet
even though it be salt and brackish, it may still save life.

Was it less so, in a figurative sense, to the travellers through that
great desert of the Middle Ages, wherein the wells were so few and far
between?  True, the water was brackish; man had denied the streams, and
filled up the wells with stones; yet for all this it was God-given, and
to those who came, and dug for the old spring, and drank, it was the
water of eternal life.  The cry was still sounding down the ages.

"If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink."  And no less
blessed are the souls that come now: but for us, the wells are so
numerous and so pure, that we too often pass them by, and go on our way
thirsting.  Strange blindness!--yet not strange: for until the Angel of
the Lord shall open the eyes of Hagar, she must needs go mourning
through the wilderness, not seeing the well.

"Lord, that we may receive our sight!"--and may come unto Thee, and
drink, and thirst no more.



CHAPTER ONE.

MY LADY'S BOWER IS SWEPT.

  "I am too low for scorn to lower me,
  And all too sorrow-stricken to feel grief."

  Edwin Arnold.

Soft and balmy was the air, and the sunlight radiant, at an early hour
of a beautiful June morning; and fair was the landscape that met the
eyes of the persons who were gathered a few feet from the portcullis of
a grand stately old castle, crowning a wooded height near the Sussex
coast.  There were two persons seated on horseback: the one a youth of
some twenty years, in a page's dress; the other a woman, who sat behind
him on the pillion.  Standing about were two men and a woman, the last
holding a child in her arms.  The woman on the pillion was closely
veiled, and much muffled in her wrappings, considering the season of the
year and the warmth of the weather; nor did she lift her veil when she
spoke.

"The child, Alina," she said, in a tone so soft and low that the words
seemed rather breathed than spoken.

The woman who stood beside the horse answered the appeal by placing the
child in the arms of the speaker.  It was a pretty, engaging little girl
of three years old.  The lady on the pillion, lifting the child
underneath her veil, strained it to her bosom, and bowed her head low
upon its light soft hair.  Meanwhile, the horse stood still as a statue,
and the page sat as still before her.  In respectful silence the other
three stood round.  They knew, every one of them, that in that embrace
to one of the two the bitterness of death was passing; and that when it
was ended she would have nothing left to fear--only because she would
have nothing left to hope.  At length, suddenly, the lady lifted her
head, and held forth the child to Alina.  Turning her head away toward
the sea, from the old castle, from the child, she made her farewell in
one word.

"Depart!"

The three standing there watched her departure--never lifting her veil,
nor turning her head--until she was hidden from their sight among the
abundant green foliage around.  They lingered a minute longer; but only
a minute--for a shrill, harsh voice from the portcullis summoned them to
return.

"Ralph, thou lither hilding!  Alina, thou jade!  Come hither at once,
and get you to work.  My Lady's bower yet unswept, by the Seven
Sleepers! and ye lingering yonder as ye had leaden heels!  By the holy
bones of Saint Benedict, our master shall con you light thanks when he
cometh!"

"That may be," said Alina, under her breath.  "Get you in, Ralph and
Jocelyn, or she shall be after again."

And she turned and walked quickly into the castle, still carrying the
child.

Eleven hours later, a very different procession climbed the castle-hill,
and passed in at the portcullis.  It was headed by a sumptuous litter,
beside which rode a gentleman magnificently attired.  Behind came a
hundred horsemen in livery, and the line was closed by a crowd of
archers in Lincoln green, bearing cross-bows.  From the litter, assisted
by the gentleman, descended a young lady of some three-and-twenty years,
upon whose lips hovered a smile of pleasure, and whose fair hair flowed
in natural ringlets from beneath a golden fillet.  The gentleman was her
senior by about fifteen years.  He was a tall, active, handsome man,
with a dark face, stern, set lips, and a pair of dark, quick, eagle-like
eyes, beneath which the group of servants manifestly quailed.

"Is the Lady's bower ready?" he asked, addressing the foremost of the
women--the one who had so roughly insisted on Alina's return.

"It is so, an't like your noble Lordship," answered she with a low
reverence; "it shall be found as well appointed as our poor labours
might compass."

He made no answer; but, offering his hand to the young lady who had
alighted from the litter, he led her up the stairs from the
banqueting-hall, into a suite of fair, stately apartments, according to
the taste of that period.  Rich tapestry decorated the walls, fresh
green rushes were strewn upon the floor, all the painting had been
renewed, and above the fireplace stood two armorial shields newly
chiselled.

"Lady," he said, in a soft, courtly tone, "here is the bower.  Doth it
like the bird?"

"It is beauteous," answered the lady, with a bright smile.

"It hath been anew swept and garnished," replied the master, bowing low,
as he took his leave.  "Yonder silver bell shall summon your women."

The lady moved to the casement on his departure.  It stood open, and the
lovely sea-view was to be seen from it.

"In good sooth, 'tis a fair spot!" she said half aloud.  "And all new
swept and garnished!"

There was no mocking echo in the chamber.  If there had been, the words
might have been borne back to the ear of the royal Alianora--"Not only
garnished, but _swept_!"

My Lady touched the silver bell, and a crowd of damsels answered her
call.  Among them came Alina; and she held by the hand the little
flaxen-haired child, who had played so prominent a part in the events of
the morning.

"Do you all speak French?" asked the Countess in that language--which,
be it remembered, was in the reign of Edward the Third the mother-tongue
of the English nobles.

She received an affirmative reply from all.

"That is well.  See to my sumpter-mules being unladen, and the gear
brought up hither.--What a pretty child! whose is it?"

Alina brought the little girl forward, and answered for her.  "The Lady
Philippa Fitzalan, my Lord's daughter."

"My Lord's daughter!"  And a visible frown clouded the Countess's brow.
"I knew not he had a daughter--Oh! _that_ child!  Take her away--I do
not want her.  _Mistress_ Philippa, for the future.  That is my
pleasure."

And with a decided pout on her previously smiling lips, the Lady of
Arundel seated herself at her tiring-glass.  Alina caught up the child,
and took her away to a distant chamber in a turret of the castle, where
she set her on her knee, and shed a torrent of tears on the little
flaxen head.

"Poor little babe! fatherless and motherless!" she cried.  "Would to our
dear Lady that thou wert no worse!  The blessed saints help thee, for
none other be like to do it save them and me."

And suddenly rising, she slipped down on her knees, holding the child
before her, beside a niche where a lamp made of pottery burned before a
blackened wooden doll.

"Lady of Pity, hast thou none for this little child?  Mother of Mercy,
for thee to deceive me!  This whole month have I been on my knees to
thee many times in the day, praying thee to incline the Lady's heart,
when she should come, to show a mother's pity to this motherless one.
And thou hast not heard me--thou hast not heard me.  Holy Virgin, what
doest thou?  Have I not offered candles at thy shrine?  Have I not
deprived myself of needful things to pay for thy litanies?  What could I
have done more?  Is this thy pity, Lady of Pity?--this thy compassion,
Mother and Maiden?"

But the passionate appeal was lost on the lifeless image to which it was
made.  As of old, so now, "there was neither voice, not any to answer,
nor any that regarded."

Nineteen years after that summer day, a girl of twenty-two sat gazing
from the casement in that turret-chamber--a girl whose face even a
flatterer would have praised but little; and Philippa Fitzalan had no
flatterers.  The pretty child--as pretty children often do--had grown
into a very ordinary, commonplace woman.  Her hair, indeed, was glossy
and luxuriant, and had deepened from its early flaxen into the darkest
shade to which it was possible for flaxen to change; her eyes were dark,
with a sad, tired, wistful look in them--a look

  "Of a dumb creature who had been beaten once,
  And never since was easy with the world."

Her face was white and thin, her figure tall, slender, angular, and
rather awkward.  None had ever cared to amend her awkwardness; it
signified to nobody whether she looked well or ill.  In a word, _she_
signified to nobody.  The tears might burn under her eyelids, or
overflow and fall,--she would never be asked what was the matter; she
might fail under her burdens and faint in the midst of them,--and if it
occurred to any one to prevent material injury to her, that was the very
utmost she could expect.  Not that the Lady Alianora was unkind to her
stepdaughter: that is, not actively unkind.  She simply ignored her
existence.  Philippa was provided, as a matter of course, with necessary
clothes, just as the men who served in the hall were provided with
livery; but anything not absolutely necessary had never been given to
her in her life.  There were no loving words, no looks of pleasure, no
affectionate caresses, lavished upon her.  If the Lady Joan lost her
temper (no rare occurrence), or the Lady Alesia her appetite, or the
Lady Mary her sleep, the whole household was disturbed; but what
Philippa suffered never disturbed nor concerned any one but herself.  To
these, her half-sisters, she formed a kind of humble companion, a
superior maid-of-all-work.  All day long she heard and obeyed the
commands of the three young ladies; all day long she was bidden, "Come
here", "Go there", "Do this", "Fetch that."  And Philippa came, and
went, and fetched, and did as she was told.  Just now she was off duty.
Their Ladyships were gone out hawking with the Earl and Countess, and
would not, in all probability, return for some hours.

And what was Philippa doing, as she sat gazing dreamily from the
casement of her turret-chamber--hers, only because nobody else liked the
room?  Her eyes were fixed earnestly on one little spot of ground, a few
feet from the castle gate; and her soul was wandering backward nineteen
years, recalling the one scene which stood out vividly, the earliest of
memory's pictures--a picture without text to explain it--before which,
and after which, came blanks with no recollection to fill them.  She saw
herself lifted underneath a woman's veil--clasped earnestly in a woman's
arms,--gazing in baby wonder up into a woman's face--a wan white face,
with dark, expressive, fervent eyes, in which a whole volume of agony
and love was written.  She never knew who that woman was.  Indeed, she
sometimes wondered whether it were really a remembrance, or only a
picture drawn by her own imagination.  But there it was always, deep
down in the heart's recesses, only waiting to be called on, and to come.
Whoever this mysterious woman were, it was some one who had loved her--
her, Philippa, whom no one ever loved.  For Alina, who had died in her
childhood, she scarcely recollected at all.  And at the very core of the
unseen, unknown heart of this quiet, undemonstrative girl, there lay one
intense, earnest, passionate longing for love.  If but one of her
father's hawks or hounds would have looked brighter at her coming, she
thought it would have satisfied her.  For she had learned, long years
ere this, that to her father himself, or to the Lady Alianora, or to her
half-brothers and sisters, she must never look for any shadow of love.
The "mother-want about the world," which pressed on her so heavily, they
would never fill.  The dull, blank uniformity of simple apathy was all
she ever received from any of them.

Her very place was filled.  The Lady Joan was the eldest daughter of the
house--not Mistress Philippa.  For the pleasure of the Countess had been
fulfilled, and Mistress Philippa the girl was called.  And when Joan was
married and went away from the castle (in a splendid litter hung with
crimson velvet), her sister Alesia stepped into her place as a matter of
course.  Philippa did not, indeed, see the drawbacks to Joan's lot.
They were not apparent on the surface.  That the stately young noble who
rode on a beautiful Barbary horse beside the litter, actually hated the
girl whom he had been forced to marry, did not enter into her
calculations: but as Joan cared very little for that herself, it was the
less necessary that Philippa should do so.  And Philippa only missed
Joan from the house by the fact that her work was so much the lighter,
and her life a trifle less disagreeable than before.

More considerations than one were troubling Philippa just now.  Blanche,
one of the Countess's tire-women, had just visited her turret-chamber,
to inform her that the Lady Alesia was betrothed, and would be married
six months thence.  It did not, however, trouble her that she had heard
of this through a servant; she never looked for anything else.  Had she
been addicted (which, fortunately for her, she was not) to that most
profitless of all manufactures, grievance-making,--she might have wept
over this little incident.  But except for one reason, the news of her
sister's approaching marriage was rather agreeable to Philippa.  She
would have another tyrant the less; though it was true that Alesia had
always been the least unkind to her of the three, and she would have
welcomed Mary's marriage with far greater satisfaction.  But that one
terrible consideration which Blanche had forced on her notice!

"I marvel, indeed, that my gracious Lord hath not thought of your
disposal, Mistress Philippa, ere this."

Suppose he should think of it!  For to Philippa's apprehension, love was
so far from being synonymous with marriage, that she held the two barely
compatible.  Marriage to her would be merely another phase of Egyptian
bondage, under a different Pharaoh.  And she knew this was her probable
lot: that (unless her father's neglect on this subject should continue--
which she devoutly hoped it might) she would some day be informed by
Blanche--or possibly the Lady Alianora herself might condescend to make
the communication--that on the following Wednesday she was to be married
to Sir Robert le Poer or Sir John de Mountchenesey; probably a man whom
she had never seen, possibly one whom she just knew by sight.

Philippa scarcely knew how, from such thoughts as these, her memory
slowly travelled back, and stayed outside the castle gate, at that June
morning of nineteen years ago.  Who was it that had parted with her so
unwillingly?  It could not, of course, be the mother of whom she had
never heard so much as the name; she must have died long ago.  On her
side, so far as Philippa knew, she had no relations; and her aunts on
the father's side, the Lady Latimer, the Lady de l'Estrange, and the
Lady de Lisle, never took the least notice of her when they visited the
castle.  And then came up the thought--"Who am I?  How is it that nobody
cares to own me?  There must be a reason.  What is the reason?"

"Mistress Philippa! look you here: the Lady Mary left with me this piece
of arras, and commanded me to give it unto you to be amended, and
beshrew me but I clean forgot.  This green is to come forth, and this
blue to be set instead thereof, and clean slea-silk for the yellow.
Haste, for the holy Virgin's love, or I shall be well swinged when she
cometh home!"



CHAPTER TWO.

HIDDEN TREASURE.

  "Who hears the falling of the forest leaf?
  Or who takes note of every flower that dies?"

  Longfellow.

The morning after Blanche and the arras had thus roughly dispelled
Philippa's dream, the Lady Alianora sat in her bower, looking over a
quantity of jewellery.  She put some articles aside to be reset,
dismissed others as past amendment, or not worth it, and ordered some to
be restored to the coffer whence they had been taken.  The Lady Alesia
was looking on, and Philippa stood behind with the maids.  At last only
one ornament was left.

"This is worth nothing," said the Countess, lifting from the table an
old bracelet, partly broken.  "Put it with the others--or stay: whence
came it?"

"Out of an ancient coffer, an't like your Ladyship," said Blanche, "that
hath been longer in the castle than I."

"I should think so," returned the Countess.  "It must have belonged to
my Lord's grandmother, or some yet more ancient dame.  'Tis worth
nothing.  Philippa, you may have it."

Not a very gracious manner of presenting a gift, it must be confessed;
but Philippa well knew that nothing of any value was likely to be handed
to her.  Moreover, this was the first present that had ever been made to
her.  And lastly, a dim notion floated through her mind that it might
have belonged to her mother; and anything connected with that dead and
unknown mother had a sacred charm in her eyes.  Her thanks, therefore,
were readily forthcoming.  She put the despised bracelet in her pocket;
and as soon as she received her dismissal, ran with a lighter step than
usual to her turret-chamber.  Without any distinct reason for doing so,
she drew the bolt, and sitting down by the window, proceeded to examine
her treasure.

It was a plain treasure enough.  A band of black enamel, set at
intervals with seed-pearl and beryls, certainly was not worth much;
especially since the snap was gone, one of the beryls and several pearls
were missing, and from the centre ornament, an enamelled rose, a
portrait had apparently been torn away.  Did the rose open?  Philippa
tried it; for she was anxious to reach the device, if there were one to
reach.  The rose opened with some effort, and the device lay before her,
written in small characters, with faded ink, on a scrap of parchment
fitting into the bracelet.

Philippa's one accomplishment, which she owed to her old friend Alina,
was the rare power of reading.  It was very seldom that she found any
opportunity of exercising it, yet she had not lost the art.  Alina had
been a priest's sister, who in teaching her to read had taught her all
that he knew himself; and Alina in her turn had thus given to Philippa
all that she had to give.

But the characters of the device were so small and faint, that Philippa
consumed half an hour ere she could decipher them.  At length she
succeeded in making out a rude rhyme or measure, in the Norman-French
which was to her more familiar than English.

  "Quy de cette eaw boyra
  Ancor soyf aura;
  Mais quy de cette eaw boyra
  Que moy luy donneray,
  Jamais soif n'aura
  A l'eternite."

Devices of the mediaeval period were parted into two divisions--
religious and amatory.  Philippa had no difficulty in deciding that this
belonged to the former category; and she guessed in a moment that the
meaning was a moral one; for she was accustomed to such hidden
allegorical allusions.  And already she had advanced one step on the
road to that Well; she knew that "whosoever drinketh of this water shall
thirst again."  Ay, from her that weary thirst was never absent.  But
where was this Well from which it might be quenched? and who was it that
could give her this living water?

Philippa's memory was a perfect storehouse of legends of the saints, and
above all of the Virgin, who stood foremost in her pantheon of gods.
She searched her repertory over and over, but in vain.  No saint, and in
particular not Saint Mary, had ever, in any legend that she knew, spoken
words like these.  And what tremendous words they were!  "Whosoever
drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst."

There were long and earnest prayers offered that night in the little
turret-chamber.  Misdirected prayers--entreaties to be prayed for,
addressed to ears that could not hear, to hands that could not help.
But perhaps they reached another Ear that could hear, another Hand that
was almighty.  The unclosing of the door is promised to them that ask.
Thanks be to God, that while it is not promised, it does sometimes in
His sovereign mercy unclose to them that know not how to ask.

The morning after this, as Philippa opened her door, one of the castle
lavenders, of washerwomen, passed it on her way down the stairs.  She
was a woman of about fifty years of age, who had filled her present
place longer than Philippa could recollect.

Throughout the whole of the Middle Ages--for a period of many centuries,
closing only about the time of the accession of the House of Hanover--
laundress was a name of evil repute, and the position was rarely assumed
by any woman who had a character to lose.  The daughters of the Lady
Alianora were strictly forbidden to speak to any lavender; but no one
had cared enough about Philippa to warn her, and she was therefore free
to converse with whom she pleased.  And a sudden thought had struck her.
She called back the lavender.

"Agnes!"

The woman stopped, came to Philippa's door, and louted--the
old-fashioned reverence which preceded the French courtesy.

"Agnes, how long hast thou been lavender here?"

"Long ere you were born, Lady."

"Canst thou remember my mother?"

Philippa was amazed at the look of abject terror which suddenly took
possession of the lavender's face.

"Hush, Lady, Lady!" she whispered, her voice trembling with fear.

Philippa laid her hand on the woman's arm.

"Wilt thou suffer aught if thou tarry?"

Agnes shook her head.

"Then come in hither."  And she pulled her into her own room, and shut
the door.  "Agnes, there is some strange thing I cannot understand: and
I will understand it.  What letteth [hinders] thee to speak to me of my
mother?"

Agnes looked astonished at Philippa's tone, as well she might.  "It hath
been forbidden, Lady."

"Who forbade it?"

The lavender's compressed lips sufficiently intimated that she did not
mean to answer that question.

"Why was it forbidden?"

The continued silence replied.

"When died she?  Thou mayest surely tell me so much."

"I dare not, Lady," replied Agnes in a scarcely audible whisper.

"How died she?"

"Lady, I dare not answer,--I must not.  You weary yourself to no good."

"But I will know," said Philippa, doggedly.

"Not from me, Lady," answered the lavender with equal determination.

"What does it all mean?" moaned poor Philippa to her baffled self.
"Look here, Agnes.  Hast thou ever seen this bracelet?"

"Ay, Lady.  The Lady Alianora never deigns to speak to such as we poor
lavenders be, but _she_ did not think it would soil her lips to comfort
us when our hearts were sad.  I have seen her wear that jewel."

A terrible fancy all at once occurred to Philippa.

"Agnes, was she an evil woman, that thou wilt not speak of her?"

The lavender's heart was reached, and her tongue loosed.

"No, no, Lady, no!" she cried, with a fervour of which Philippa had not
imagined her capable.  "The snow was no whiter than her life, the honey
no sweeter than her soul!"

"Then what does it all mean?" said Philippa again, in a tone of more
bewilderment than ever.

But the momentary fervour had died away, and silence once more settled
on the lavender's tongue.  Agnes louted, and walked away; and Philippa
knew only one thing more--that the broken bracelet had been her
mother's.  But who was she, and what was she, this mysterious mother of
whom none would speak to her--the very date of whose death her child was
not allowed to know?

"That is too poor for you, Alesia," said the Lady Alianora.

"'Tis but thin, in good sooth," observed that young lady.

"I suppose Philippa must have a gown for the wedding," resumed the
Countess, carelessly.  "It will do for her."

It was cloth of silver.  Philippa had never had such a dress in her
life.  She listened in mute surprise.  Could it be possible that she was
intended to appear as a daughter of the house at Alesia's marriage?

"You may choose your hood-stuff from chose velvets," said the Countess
condescendingly to Philippa.  "I trow you will have to choose your own
gowns after you are wedded, so you may as well begin now."

"Will Philippa be wed when I am?" yawned Alesia.

"The same day," said the Lady Alianora.

The day was about sixty hours off; and this was the first word that
Philippa had heard of her destiny.  To whom was she to be handed over
after this summary fashion?  Would the Countess, of her unspeakable
goodness, let her know that?  But the Countess could not tell her; she
had not yet heard.  She thought there were two knights in treaty for
her, and the last time he had mentioned it, the Earl had not decided
between them.

As soon as Alesia's wardrobe was settled, and Philippa was no longer
wanted to unfold silks and exhibit velvets, she fled like a hunted deer
to her turret-chamber.  Kneeling down by her bed, she buried her face in
the coverlet, and the long-repressed cry of the sold slave broke forth
at last.

"O Mother, Mother, Mother!"

The door opened, but Philippa did not hear it.

"Lady, I cry you mercy," said the voice of Agnes in a compassionate
tone.  "I meant not indeed to pry into your privacy; but as I was coming
up the stairs, I thought I heard a scream.  I feared you were sick."

Philippa looked up, with a white, woe-begone face and tearless eyes.

"I wish I were, Agnes!" she said in a hopeless tone.  "I would I were
out of this weary and wicked world."

"Ah, I have wished that ere now," responded the lavender.  "'Tis an ill
wish, Lady.  I have heard one say so."

"One that never felt it, I trow," said Philippa.

"No did, Lady?  Ay, one whose lot was far bitterer than yours."

"Verily, I would give something to see one whose lot were so," answered
the girl, bitterly enough.  "I have no mother, and as good as no father;
and none would care were I out of the world this night.  Not a soul
loveth me, nor ever did."

"She used to say One did love us," said Agnes in a low voice; "even He
that died on the rood.  I would I could mind what she told us; but it is
long, long ago; and mine heart is hard, and my remembrance dim.  Yet I
do mind that last time she spake, only the very day before--never mind
what.  But that which came after stamped it on mine heart for ever.  It
was the last time I heard her voice; and I knew--we all knew--what was
coming, though she did not.  It was about water she spake, and he that
drank should thirst again; and there was another well some whither,
whereof he that should drink should never thirst.  And He that died on
the rood would give us that better water, if we asked Him."

"But how shall I get at Him to ask Him?" cried Philippa.

"She said He could hear, if we asked," replied the lavender.

"Who said?"

"She--that you wot of.  Our Lady that used to be."

"My mother?"

Agnes nodded.  "And the water that He should give should bring life and
peace.  It was a sweet story and a fair, as she told it.  But there
never was a voice like hers--never."

Philippa rose, and opened her cherished bracelet.  She could guess what
that bracelet had been.  The ornament was less common in the Middle Ages
than in the periods which preceded and followed them; and it was usually
a love-token.  But where was the love which had given and received this?
Was it broken, too, like the bracelet?

She read the device to Agnes.

"It was something like that," said Agnes.  "But she read the story
touching it, out of a book."

"What was she like?" asked Philippa in a low tone.

"Look in the mirror, Lady," answered Agnes.

Philippa began to wonder whether this were the mysterious reason for her
bitter lot.

"Dost thou know I am to be wed?"

"Ay, Lady."

So the very lavenders had known it before herself!  But finding Agnes,
as she thought, more communicative than before, Philippa returned to her
former subject.

"What was her name?"

Agnes shook her head.

"Thou knowest it?"

The lavender nodded in answer.

"Then why not tell it me?  Surely I may know what they christened her at
the font--Philippa, or Margaret, or Blanche?"

Agnes hesitated a moment, but seemed to decide on replying.  She sank
her voice so low that Philippa could barely hear her, but she just
caught the words.

"The Lady Isabel."

Philippa sat a minute in silence; but Agnes made no motion to go.

"Agnes, thou saidst her lot was more bitter than mine.  How was it more
bitter?"

Agnes pointed to the window of the opposite turret, where the
tiring-women slept, and outside of which was hung a luckless lark in a
small wicker cage.

"Is his lot sweet, Lady?"

"I trow not, in good sooth," said Philippa; "but his is like mine."

"I cry you mercy," answered the lavender, shaking her head.  "He hath
known freedom, and light, and air, and song.  That was her lot--not
yours, Lady."

Philippa continued to watch the lark.  His poor caged wings were beating
vainly against the wicker-work, until he wearily gave up the attempt,
and sat quietly on the perch, drooping his tired head.

"He is not satisfied," resumed Agnes in a low tone.  "He is only weary.
He is not happy--only too worn-out to care for happiness.  Ah, holy
Virgin! how many of us women are so!  And she was wont to say that there
was happiness in this life, yet not in this world.  It lay, she said, in
that other world above, where God sitteth; and if we would ask for Him
that was meant by the better water, it would come and dwell in our
hearts along with Him.  Our sweet Lady help us! we seem to have missed
it somehow."

"I have, at any rate," whispered Philippa, her eyes fixed dreamily on
the weary lark.



CHAPTER THREE.

GUY OF ASHRIDGE.

  "For merit lives from man to man,
  And not from man, O Lord, to Thee."

  Tennyson.

Not until the evening before her marriage did Philippa learn the name of
her new master.  The Earl's choice, she was then informed, had fallen on
Sir Richard Sergeaux, a knight of Cornwall, who would receive divers
manors with the hand of the eldest daughter of Arundel.  Philippa was,
however, not told that Sir Richard was expected to pay for the grants
and the alliance in extremely hard cash.

For to the lofty position of eldest daughter of Arundel (for that
morning only) Philippa, to her intense surprise, found herself suddenly
lifted.  She was robed in cloth of silver; her hair flowed from beneath
a jewelled golden fillet; her neck was encircled by rubies, and a ruby
and pearl girdle clasped her waist.  She felt all the time as though she
were dreaming, especially when the Lady Alianora herself superintended
her arraying, and even condescended to remark that "the Lady Philippa
did not look so very unseemly after all."

Not least among the points which astonished her was the resumption of
her title.  She did not know that this had formed a part of the bargain
with Sir Richard, who had proved impracticable on harder terms.  He did
not mind purchasing the eldest daughter of Arundel at the high price set
upon her; but he gave the Earl distinctly to understand that if he were
merely selling a Mistress Philippa, there must be a considerable
discount.

When the ceremony and the wedding festivities were over, and her palfrey
was standing ready at the door, Philippa timidly entered the
banqueting-hall, to ask--for the first and last time--her father's
blessing.  He was conversing with the Earl of Kent, the bridegroom of
Alesia, concerning the merits of certain hawks recently purchased; and
near him, at her embroidery-frame, sat the Countess Alianora.

Philippa knelt first to her.

"Farewell, Philippa!" said the Countess, in a rather kinder tone than
usual.  "The saints be with thee."

Then she turned to the only relative she had.

Earl Richard just permitted his jewelled fingers to touch Philippa's
velvet hood, saying carelessly,--"Our Lady keep thee!--I cry you mercy,
fair son; the lesser tercel is far stronger on the wing."

As Philippa rose, Sir Richard Sergeaux took her hand and led her away.
So she mounted her palfrey, and rode away from Arundel Castle.  There
were only two things she was sorry to leave--Agnes, because she might
have told her more about her mother,--and the grave, in the Priory
churchyard below, of the baby Lady Alianora--the little sister who never
grew up to tyrannise over her.

It was a long journey ere they reached Kilquyt Manor, and Philippa had
time to make the acquaintance of her new owner.  He was about her own
age, and so far as she could at first judge, a reasonably good-tempered
man.  The first discovery she made was that he was rather proud of her.
Of Philippa the daughter of Arundel, of course, not of Philippa the
woman: but it was so new to be reckoned anything or anybody--so strange
to think that somebody was proud of her--that Philippa enjoyed the
knowledge.  As to his loving her, or her loving him, these were ideas
that never entered the minds of either.

So at first Philippa found her married life a pleasant change.  She was
now at the head, instead of being under the feet of every one else; and
her experience of Sir Richard gave her the impression at the outset that
he would not prove a hard master.  Nor did he, strictly speaking; but on
further acquaintance he proved a very trying one.  His temper was not of
the stormy kind that reigned at Arundel, which had hitherto been
Philippa's only idea of a bad temper: but he was a perpetual grumbler,
and the slightest temporary discomfort or vexation would overcast her
sky with conjugal clouds for the rest of the day.  The least stone in
his path was treated as a gigantic mountain; the narrowest brooklet as
an unfathomable sea.  And gradually--she scarcely knew how or when--the
old weary discomfort crept back over Philippa's heart, the old
unsatisfied longing for the love that no one gave.  Her bower at Kilquyt
was no more strewn with roses than her turret-chamber at Arundel.  She
found that "On change du ciel--l'on ne change point de soi."  The damask
robes and caparisoned palfreys, which her husband did not grudge to her
as her father had done, proved utterly unsatisfying to the misunderstood
cravings of her immortal soul.  She did not herself comprehend why she
was not happier.  She knew not the nature of the thirst which was upon
her, which she was trying in vain to quench at the broken cisterns
within her reach.  Drinking of this water, she thirsted again; and she
had not yet found the way to the Well of the Living Water.

About seven years after her marriage, Philippa stood one day at the gate
of her manor.  It was a beautiful June morning--just such another as
that one which "had failed her hope" at the gate of Arundel Castle,
thirty years before.  Sir Richard had ridden away on his road to London,
whence he was summoned to join his feudal lord, the Earl, and Lady
Sergeaux stood looking after him in her old dreamy fashion, though
half-an-hour had almost passed since she had caught sight of the last
waving of his nodding plume through the trees.  He had left her a legacy
of discomfort, for his spurs had been regilded, not at all to his mind,
and he had been growling over them ever since the occurrence, "Dame,
have you a draught of cold water to bestow on a weary brother?"

Philippa started suddenly when the question reached her ear.

He who asked it was a monk in the habit of the Dominican Order, and very
worn and weary he looked.  Lady Sergeaux called for one of her women,
and supplied him with the water which he sorely needed, as was manifest
from the eager avidity with which he drank.  When he had given back the
goblet, and the woman was gone, the monk turned towards Philippa, and
uttered words which astonished her no little.

  "`Quy de cette eaw boyra
  Ancor soyf aura;
  Mays quy de l'eaw boyra
  Que moy luy donneray,
  Jamays soyf n'aura
  A l'eternite.'"

"You know that, brother?" she said breathlessly.

"Do you, Lady?" asked the monk--as Philippa felt, with a deeper than the
merely literal meaning.

"I know the `ancor soyf aura,'" she said, mournfully; "I have not
reached beyond that."

"Then did you ask, and He did _not_ give?" inquired the stranger.

"No--I never asked, for--" she was going on to add, "I never knew where
to ask."

"Then 'tis little marvel you never had, Lady," answered the monk.

"But how to ask?--whom to ask?  There may be the Well, but where is the
way?"

"How to ask, Lady?  As I asked you but now for that lower, poorer water,
whereof whosoever drinketh shall thirst again.  Whom to ask?  Be there
more Gods in Heaven than one?  Ask the Master, not the servants.  And
where is the way?  It was made on the red rood, thirteen hundred years
ago, when `one of the soldiers with a spear pierced His side, and
forthwith came thereout blood and water.'  Over that stream of blood is
the way to the Well of Living Water."

"I do not fully understand you," returned Philippa.

"You look weary, Lady," said the monk, changing his tone.

"I am weary," she answered; "wearier than you--in one sense."

"Ay, wearier than I," he replied; "for I have been to the Well, and have
found rest."

"Are you a priest?" asked Philippa suddenly.

The monk nodded.

"Then come in hither and rest, and let me confess to you.  I fancy you
might tell me what would help me."

The monk silently obeyed, and followed her to the house.  An hour later
he sat in Philippa's bower, and she knelt before him.

"Father," she said, at the close of her tale, "I have never known rest
nor love.  All my life I have been a lonely, neglected woman.  Is there
any balm-tree by your Well for such wounds as mine?--any healing virtue
in its waters that could comfort me?"

"Have you never injured or neglected any, daughter?" asked the monk
quietly.

"Never!" she said, almost indignantly.

"I cannot hold with you there," he replied.

"Whom have I ever injured?" exclaimed Philippa, half angrily, half
amazed.

"Listen," said he, "and I will tell you of One whom all your life you
have injured and neglected--God."

Philippa's protestations died on her lips.  She had not expected to hear
such words as these.

"Nay, heed not my words," he pursued gently.  "Your own lips shall bring
you in guilty.  Have you loved God with all your mind, and heart, and
soul, and strength?  Hath He been in all your thoughts?"

Philippa felt instinctively that the monk spoke truly.  She had not
loved God, she had not even wished to love Him.  Her conscience cried to
her, "Unclean!" yet she was too proud to acknowledge it.  She felt
angry, not with herself, but with him.  She thought he "rubbed the sore,
when he should bring the plaster."  Comfort she had asked, and
condemnation he was giving her instead.

"Father!" she said, in mingled sadness and vexation, "you deal me hard
measure."

"My daughter," answered the monk very gently, "the pitcher must be
voided ere it can be filled.  If you go to the Well with your vessel
full of the water of earth, there will be no room there for the Living
Water."

"Is it only for saints, then?" she asked in a disappointed tone.

"It is only for sinners," answered he: "and according to your own
belief, you are not a sinner.  The Living Water is not wasted on
pitchers that have been filled already at other cisterns, `I will give
unto him that is athirst'--but to him only--`of the Fountain of the
Water of Life, freely.'"

"But tell me, in plain words, what is that Water of Life?"

"The Holy Spirit of God."

Philippa's next question was not so wide of the mark as it seemed.

"Are you a true Dominican?"

"I am one of the Order of Predicant Friars."

"From what house?"

"From Ashridge."

"Who sent you forth to preach?"

"God."

"Ah! yes, but I mean, what bishop or abbot?"

"Is the seal of the servant worth more than that of the Master?"

"I would know, Father," urged Philippa.

The monk smiled.  "Archbishop Bradwardine," he said.

"Then Ashridge is a Dominican house?  I know not that vicinage."

"Men give us another name," responded the monk slowly, "which I see you
would know.  Be it so.  They call us--Boni-Homines."

"But I thought," said Philippa, looking bewilderedly into his face, "I
thought those were very evil men.  And Archbishop Bradwardine was a very
holy man--almost a saint."

A faint ironical smile flitted for a moment over the monk's grave lips.
The gravity was again unbroken the next instant.

"A very holy man," he repeated.  "He walked with God; and he is not, for
God took him.  Ay, took him away from the evil to come, where he should
vex his righteous soul no more by unlawful deeds--where the alloyed gold
of worldly greatness, which men would needs braid over the pure ermine
of his life, should soil and crush it no more."

He spoke rather to himself than to Philippa: and his eyes had a far-away
look in them, as he lifted his head and gazed from the window over the
moorland.

"Then what are the Boni-Homines?" inquired Lady Sergeaux.

"A few sinners," answered the monk, "whose hearts God hath touched, that
they have sought and found that Well of the Living Water."

"But, Father, explain it to me!" she cried anxiously, perhaps even a
little querulously.  "Put it in plain words, that I can understand it.
What is it to drink this Living Water?"

"To come to Christ, my daughter," replies the monk.

"But I cannot understand you," she objected, in the same tone.  "How can
I come?  What mean you by coming?  He is not here in this chamber, that
I can rise and go to Him.  Can you not use words more intelligible to
me?"

"In the first place, my daughter," softly replied the monk, "you are
under a great mistake.  Christ is here in this chamber, and hath heard
every word that we have said.  And in the second place, I cannot use
words that shall be plainer to you.  How can the dead understand the
living?  How shall a man born blind be brought to know the difference of
colour between green and blue.  Yet the hardship lieth not in the
inaptness of the teacher, but in the inability of the taught."

"But I am not blind, nor dead!" cried Philippa.

"Both," answered the monk.  "So, by nature, be we all."

Philippa made no reply; she was too vexed to make any.  The monk laid
his hand gently upon her head.

"Take the best wish that I can make for you:--God show you how blind you
are!  God put life within you, that you may awake, and arise from the
dead, and see the light of Christ!  May He grant you that thirst which
shall be satisfied with nothing short of the Living Water--which shall
lead you to disregard all the roughnesses of the way, and the storms of
the journey, so that you may win Christ, and be found in Him!  God strip
you of your own goodness!--for I fear you are over-well satisfied
therewith.  And no goodness shall ever have admittance into Heaven save
the goodness which is of God."

"But surely," exclaimed Philippa, looking up in surprise, "there is
grace of congruity?"

"Grace of congruity! grace of condignity!"  [see Note] cried the monk
fervently.  "Grace of sin and gracelessness!  It is not all worth so
much as one of these rushes upon your floor.  If you carry grace of
congruity to the gates of Heaven, I warn you it shall never bear you one
step beyond.  Lay down those miserable rush-staffs, wherein is no pith;
and take God's golden staff held out to you, which is the full and
perfected obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ.  That staff shall not fail
you.  All the angels at the gate of Paradise know it; and the doors
shall fly wide open to whoso smiteth on them with that staff of God.
Lord, open her eyes, that she may see!"

The prayer was answered, but not then.

"What shall I call you?" asked Philippa, when the monk rose to depart.

"Men call me Guy of Ashridge," he said.

"I hope to see you again, Father," responded Philippa.

"So do I, my daughter," answered the monk, "in that other land whereinto
nothing shall enter that defileth.  Nothing but Christ and Christ's--the
Head and the body, the Master and the meynie [household servant].  May
the Master make you one of the meynie!  Farewell."

And in five minutes more, Guy of Ashridge was gone.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note.  "Condignity implies merit, and of course claims reward on the
score of justice.  Congruity pretends only to a sort of imperfect
qualification for the gifts and reception of God's grace."--_Manet's
Church History_, iv. 81.



CHAPTER FOUR.

MOTHER JOAN.

  "She hears old footsteps wandering slow
  Through the lone chambers of her heart."

  Lowell.

When Guy of Ashridge was fairly gone, Philippa felt at once relieved and
vexed to lose him.  She had called in a new physician to prescribe for
her disease; and she was sure that he had administered a harmful
medicine, if he had not also given a wrong diagnosis.  Instead of being
better, she felt worse; and she resolved to give herself the next dose,
in the form of a "retreat" into a convent, to pray and fast, and make
her peace with God.  Various reasons induced her to select a convent at
a distance from home.  After a period of indecision, she fixed upon the
Abbey of Shaftesbury, and obtained the necessary permission to reside
there for a time.

Lady Sergeaux arrived at Shaftesbury towards the close of August.  She
found the Abbess and nuns kindly-disposed towards her; and her stay was
not disagreeable, except for the restless, dissatisfied feelings of her
own heart.  But she found that her peace was not made, for all her
fastings, scourgings, vigils, and prayers.  Guy's words came back to her
with every rite, "God strip you of your own goodness!" and she could not
wrap herself in its mantle as complacently as before.

In the Abbey of Shaftesbury was one nun who drew Philippa's attention
more than the others.  This was a woman of about sixty years of age,
whom all the convent called Mother Joan.  An upright, white-haired
woman, with some remnant of former comeliness; but Mother Joan was
blind.  Philippa pitied her affliction, and liked her simple,
straightforward manner.  She had many old memories and tales of
forgotten times, which she was ready enough to tell; and these Philippa,
as well as the nuns, always liked to hear.

"How old were you, Mother Joan, when you became a nun?" she asked her
one day during the recreation-hour.

"Younger than you, Lady," said Mother Joan.  "I was but an hilding [see
Note 1] of twenty."

"And wherefore was it, Mother?" inquired a giddy young nun, whose name
was Laura.  "Wert thou disappointed in love, or--"

The scorn exhibited on the blind woman's face stopped her.

"I never was such a fool," said Mother Joan, bluntly.  "I became a nun
because my father had decreed it from my cradle, and my mother willed it
also.  There were but two of us maids, and--ah, well! she would not have
more than one to suffer."

"Had thy sister, then, a woeful story?" asked Sister Laura, settling her
wimple, [see note 2], as she thought, becomingly.

"Never woman woefuller," sadly replied Mother Joan.

The next opportunity she had, Lady Sergeaux asked one of the more
discreet nuns who Mother Joan was.

"Eldest daughter of the great house of Le Despenser," replied Sister
Senicula; "of most excellent blood and lineage; daughter unto my noble
Lord of Gloucester that was, and the royal Lady Alianora de Clare, his
wife, the daughter of a daughter of King Edward.  By Mary, Mother and
Maiden, she is the noblest nun in all these walls."

"And what hath been her history?" inquired Philippa.

"Her history, I think, was but little," replied Senicula; "your Ladyship
heard her say that she had been professed at twenty years.  But I have
known her to speak of a sister of hers, who had a very sorrowful story.
I have often wished to know what it were, but she will never tell it."

The next recreation-time found Philippa, as usual, seated by Mother
Joan.  The blind nun passed her hand softly over Philippa's dress.

"That is a damask," [the figured silk made at Damascus] she said.  "I
used to like damask and baudekyn."

[Note: Baudekyn or baldekyn was the richest silk stuff then known, and
also of oriental manufacture.]

"I never wear baudekyn," answered Philippa.  "I am but a knight's wife."

"What is the colour?" the blind woman wished to know.

"Red and black, in stripes," said Philippa.

"I remember," said Mother Joan, dreamily, "many years ago, seeing mine
aunt, the Lady of Gloucester, at the court of King Edward of Caernarvon,
arrayed in a fair baudekyn of rose colour and silver.  It was the
loveliest stuff I ever saw.  And I could see then."

Her voice fell so mournfully that Philippa tried to turn her attention
by asking her,--"Knew you King Edward of Westminster?"  [See note 3.]

"Nay, Lady de Sergeaux, with what years do you credit me?" rejoined the
nun, laughing a little.  "Edward of Westminster was dead ere I was born.
But I have heard of him from them that did remember him well.  He was a
goodly man, of lofty stature, and royal presence: a wise man, and a
cunning [clever]--saving only that he opposed our holy Father the Pope."

"Did he so?" responded Philippa.

"Did he so!" ironically repeated Mother Joan.  "Did he not command that
no Bull should ever be brought into England? and hanged he not the Prior
of Saint John of Jerusalem for reading one to his monks?  I can tell
you, to brave Edward of Westminster was no laughing matter.  He never
cared what his anger cost.  His own children had need to think twice ere
they aroused his ire.  Why, on the day of his daughter the Lady
Elizabeth's marriage with my noble Lord of Hereford, he, being angered
by some word of the bride, snatched her coronet from off her head, and
flung it behind the fire.  Ay, and a jewel or twain was lost therefrom
ere the Lady's Grace had it back."

"And his son, King Edward of Caernarvon--what like was he?" asked
Philippa, smiling.

Mother Joan did not answer immediately.  At last she said,--"The blessed
Virgin grant that they which have reviled him be no worse than he!  He
had some strange notions--so had other men, whom I at least am bound to
hold in honour.  God grant all peace!"

Philippa wondered who the other men were, and whether Mother Joan
alluded to her own ancestors.  She knew nothing of the Despensers,
except the remembrance that she had never heard them alluded to at
Arundel but in a tone of bitter scorn and loathing.

"Maybe," continued the blind woman, in a softer voice, "he was no worse
for his strange opinions.  Some were not.  'Tis a marvellous matter,
surely, that there be that can lead lives of angels, and yet hold views
that holy Church condemneth as utterly to be abhorred."

"Whom mean you, Mother?"

"I mean, child," replied the nun, speaking slowly and painfully, "one
whom I hope is gone to God.  One to whom, and for whom, this world was
an ill place; and, therefore, I trust she hath found her rest in a
better.  God knoweth how and when she died--if she be dead.  We never
knew."

Mother Joan made the sign of the cross, and a very mournful expression
came over her face.

"Ah, holy Virgin!" she said, lifting her sightless eyes, "why is it that
such things are permitted?  The wicked dwell in peace, and increase
their goods; the holy dwell hardly and die poor.  Couldst not thou
change the lots?  There is at this moment one man in the world, clad in
cloth of gold, dwelling gloriously, than whom the foul fiend himself is
scarcely worse; and there was one woman, like the angels, whose Queen
thou art, and only God and thou know what became of her.  Blessed Mary
must such things always be?  I cannot understand it.  I suppose thou
canst."

It was the old perplexity--as old as Asaph; but he understood it when he
went into the sanctuary of God, and Mother Joan had never followed him
there.

"Lady de Sergeaux," resumed the blind nun, "there is at times a tone in
your voice, which mindeth me strangely of hers--hers, of whom I spake
but now.  If I offend not in asking it, I pray you tell me who were your
elders?"

Philippa gave her such information as she had to give.  "I am a daughter
of my Lord of Arundel."

"Which Lord?" exclaimed Mother Joan, in a voice as of deep interest
suddenly awakened.

"They call him," answered Philippa, "Earl Richard the Copped-Hat."  [See
Note 4.]

"Ah!" answered Mother Joan, in that deep bass tone which sounds almost
like an execration.  "That was the man.  Like Dives, clad in purple and
fine linen, and faring sumptuously every day; and his portion shall be
with Dives at the last.  Your pardon, Dame; I forgat for the nonce that
I spake to his daughter.  Yet I said but truth."

"That may be," responded Philippa under her breath.

"Then you have not found him a saint?" replied the blind nun, with a
bitter little laugh.  "Well, I might have guessed that.  And you, then,
are a daughter of that proud jade Alianora of Lancaster, for whose
indwelling the fiend swept the Castle of Arundel clean of God's angels?
I do not think she made up for it."

Philippa's own interest was painfully aroused now.  Surely Mother Joan
knows something of that mysterious history which hitherto she had failed
so sadly to discover.

"I cry you mercy, Mother," she said.  "But I am not the daughter of the
Lady Alianora."

"Whose, then?  Quick!" cried Mother Joan, in accents of passionate
earnestness.

"Who was my mother," answered Philippa, "I cannot tell you, for I was
never told myself.  All that I know of her I had but from a poor
lavender, that spake well of her, and she called her the Lady Isabel."

"Isabel!  Isabel!"

Philippa was deeply touched; for the name, twice repeated, broke in a
wail of tender, mournful love, from the lips of the blind nun.

"Mother," she pleaded, "if you know anything of her, for the holy
Virgin's love tell it to me, her child.  I have missed her and longed
for her all my life.  Surely I have a right to know her story who gave
me that life!"

"Thou shalt know," responded Mother Joan in a choked voice.  "But,
child, name me Mother Joan no longer.  Call me what I am to thee--Aunt.
Thy mother was my sister."

And then Philippa knew that she stood upon the threshold of all her
long-nursed hopes.

"But tell me first," pursued the nun, "how that upstart treated thee--
Alianora."

"She was not unkind to me," answered Philippa hesitatingly.  "She did
not give me precedence over her daughters, but then she is of the blood
royal, and I am not.  But--"

"Not royal!" exclaimed Mother Joan in extremely treble tones.  "Have
they brought thee up so ignorantly as that?  Not of the blood royal,
quotha!  Child, by our Lady's hosen, thou art fifty-three steps nearer
the throne than she!  We were daughters of Alianora, whose mother was
Joan of Acon, [Acre, where Joan was born], daughter of King Edward of
Westminster; and she is but the daughter of Henry, the son of Edmund,
son of Henry of Winchester."  [Henry the Third.]

Philippa was silent from astonishment.

"Go on," said the nun.  "What did she to thee?"

"She did little," said Philippa in a low voice.  "She only left undone."

"Ah!" replied Mother Joan.  "The one half of the _Confiteor_.  The other
commonly marcheth apace behind."

"Then," said Philippa, "my mother was--"

"Isabel La Despenser, younger daughter of the Lord Hugh Le Despenser the
younger, Earl of Gloucester, and grand-daughter of Hugh the elder, Earl
of Winchester.  Thou knowest their names well, if not hers."

"I know nothing about them," replied Philippa, shaking her head.  "None
ever told me.  I only remember to have heard them named at Arundel as
very wicked persons, and rebels against the King."

"Holy Virgin!" cried Mother Joan.  "Rebels!--against which King?"

"I do not know," answered Philippa.

"But I do!" exclaimed the blind woman, bitterly.  "Rebels against a
rebel!  Traitors to a traitress!  God reward Isabelle of France for all
the shame and ruin that she brought on England!  Was the crown that she
carried with her worth the price which she cost that carried it?  Well,
she is dead now--gone before God to answer all that long and black
account of hers.  Methinks it took some answering.  Child, my father did
some ill things, and my grandfather did more; but did either ever
anything to merit the shame and agony of those two gibbets at Hereford
and Bristol?  Gibbets for them, that had sat in the King's council, and
aided him to rule the realm,--and one of them a white-haired man over
sixty years!  [See Note 5.] And what had they done save to anger the
tigress?  God help us all!  We be all poor sinners; but there be some,
at the least in men's eyes, a deal blacker than others.  But thou
wouldst know her story, not theirs: yet theirs is the half of hers, and
the tale were unfinished if I told it not."

"What was she like?" asked Philippa.

Mother Joan passed her hand slowly over the features of her niece.

"Like, and not like," she said.  "Thy features are sharper cut than
hers; and though in thy voice there is a sound of hers, it is less soft
and low.  Hers was like the wind among the strings of an harp hanging on
the wall.  Thy colouring I cannot see.  But if thou be like her, thine
hair is glossy, and of chestnut hue; and thine eyes are dark and
mournful."

"Tell me about her, Aunt, I pray you," said Philippa.

Joan La Despenser smoothed down her monastic habit, and leaned her head
back against the wall.  There was evidently some picture of memory's
bringing before her sightless eyes, and her voice itself had a lower and
softer tone as she spoke of the dead sister.  But her first words were
not of her.

"Holy Virgin!" she said, "when thou didst create the world, wherefore
didst thou make women?  For women have but two fates: either they are
black-souled, like the tigress Isabelle, and then they prosper and
thrive, as she did; or else they are white snowdrops, like our dead
darling, and then they are martyrs.  A few die in the cradle--those whom
thou lovest best; and what fools are we to weep for them!  Ah me! things
be mostly crooked in this world.  Is there another, me wondereth, where
they grow straight?--where the black-souled die on the gibbets, and the
white-souled wear the crowns?  I would like to die, and change to that
Golden Land, if there be.  Methinks it is far off."

It was a Land "very far off."  And over the eyes of Joan La Despenser
the blinding film of earth remained; for she had not drunk of the Living
Water.

"The founder of our house,"--thus Mother Joan began her narrative,--"was
my grandfather's father, slain, above an hundred years ago, at the
battle of Evesham.  He left an infant son, not four years old when he
died.  This was my grandfather, Hugh Le Despenser, Earl of Winchester,
who at the age of twenty-five advanced the fortunes of his house by
wedding a daughter of Warwick, Isabel, the young widow of the Lord de
Chaworth, and the mother's mother of Alianora of Lancaster.  Thou and
thy father's wife, therefore, are near akin.  This Isabel (after whom
thy mother was named) was a famed beauty, and brought moreover a very
rich dower.  My grandfather and she had many children, but I need only
speak of one--my hapless father.

"King Edward of Caernarvon loved my father dearly.  In truth, so did
Edward of Westminster, who bestowed on him, ere he was fully ten years
old, the hand of his grand-daughter, my mother, Alianora de Clare, who
brought him in dower the mighty earldom of Gloucester.  The eldest of us
was Hugh my brother; then came I; next followed my other brothers,
Edward, Gilbert, and Philip; and last of all, eight years after me, came
Isabel thy mother.

"From her birth this child was mine especial care.  I was alway a
thoughtful, quiet maiden, more meet for cloister than court; and I well
remember, though 'tis fifty years ago, the morrow when my baby-sister
was put into mine arms, and I was bidden to have a care of her.  Have a
care of her!  Had she never passed into any worse care than mine--
well-a-day!  Yet, could I have looked forward into the future, and have
read Isabel's coming history, I might have thought that the wisest and
kindest course I could take would be to smother her in her cradle.

"Before she was three years old, she passed from me.  My Lord of
Arundel--Earl Edmund that then was--was very friendly with my father;
and he desired that their families should be drawn closer together by
the marriage of Richard Fitzalan, his son and heir--a boy of twelve
years--with one of my father's daughters.  My father, thus appealed
unto, gave him our snowdrop.

"`Not Joan,' said he; `Joan is God's.  She shall be the spouse of Christ
in Shaftesbury Abbey.'

"So it came that ere my darling was three years old, they twined the
bride-wreath for her hair, and let it all down flowing, soft and
shining, from beneath her golden fillet.  Ah holy Virgin! had it been
thy pleasure to give me that cup of gall they mixed that day for her,
and to her the draught of pure fresh water thou hast held to me!
Perchance I could have drunk it with less pain than she did; and at
least it would have saved the pain to her.

"That was in the fourteenth year of Edward of Caernarvon.  [1320.] So
long as Earl Edmund of Arundel lived, there was little to fear.  He, as
I said, loved my father, and was a father to Isabel.  The Lady of
Arundel likewise was then living, and was careful over her as a mother.
Knowest thou that the Lady Griselda, of such fame for her patient
endurance, was an ancestress of thy father?  It should have been of thy
mother.  Hers was a like story; only that to her came no reward, no
happy close.

"But ere I proceed, I must speak of one woeful matter, which I do
believe to have been the ruin of my father.  He was never loved by the
people--partly, I think, because he gave counsel to the King to rule, as
they thought, with too stern a hand; partly because my grandfather loved
money too well, nor was he over careful how he came thereby; partly
because the Queen hated him, and she was popular; but far above all
these for another reason, which was the occasion of his fall, and the
ruin of all who loved him.

"Hast thou ever heard of the Boni-Homines?  They have other names--
Albigenses, Waldenses, Cathari, Men of the Valleys.  They are a sect of
heretics, dwelling originally in the dominions of the Marquis of
Monferrato, toward the borders betwixt France, Italy, and Spain: men
condemned by the Church, and holding certain evil opinions touching the
holy doctrine of grace of condignity, and free-will, and the like.  Yet
some of them, I must confess, lead not unholy lives."

Philippa merely answered that she had heard of these heretics.

"Well," resumed the blind woman, "my father became entangled with these
men.  How or wherefore I know not.  He might have known that their
doctrines had been condemned by the holy Council of Lumbars two hundred
years back.  But when the Friars Predicants were first set up by the
blessed Dominic, under leave of our holy Father the Pope, many of these
sectaries crept in among them.  A company went forth from Ashridge, and
another from Edingdon--the two houses of this brood of serpents.  And
one of them, named Giles de Edingdon, fell in with my father, and taught
him the evil doctrines of these wretches, whom Earl Edmund of Cornwall
(of the blood royal), that wedded a daughter of our house, had in his
unwisdom brought into this land; for he was a wicked man and an ill
liver.  [See Note 6.] King Edward of Caernarvon likewise listened to
these men, and did but too often according to their counsels.

"Against my grandfather and others, but especially against these men of
Edingdon and Ashridge, Dame Isabelle the Queen set herself up.  King
Edward had himself sent her away on a certain mission touching the
homage due to the King of France for Guienne; for he might not adventure
to leave the realm at that time.  But now this wicked woman gathered
together an army, and with Prince Edward, and the King's brother the
Earl of Kent, who were deluded by her enchantments, she came back and
landed at Orewell, and thence marched with flying colours to Bristol,
men gathering everywhere to her standard as she came.

"We were in Bristol on that awful day.  My mother, the King had left in
charge of the Tower of London; but in Bristol, with the King, were my
grandfather and father my Lord and Lady of Arundel, their son Richard,
and Isabel, and myself.  I was then a maiden of sixteen years.  When
Dame Isabelle's banners floated over the gates of the city, and her
trumpets summoned the citizens to surrender, King Edward, who was a
timid man, flung himself into the castle for safety, and with him all of
us, saving my grandfather, and my Lord of Arundel, who remained without,
directing the defence.

"The citizens of Bristol, thus besieged (for she had surrounded the
town), sent to ask Dame Isabelle her will, offering to surrender the
city on condition that she would spare their lives and property.  But
she answered by her trumpeter, that she would agree to nothing unless
they would first surrender the Earls of Winchester and Arundel; `for,'
saith she, `I am come purposely to destroy them.'  Then the citizens
consulted together, and determined to save their lives and property by
the sacrifice of the noblest blood in England, and (as it was shown
afterwards) of the blood royal.  They opened their gates, and yielded up
my grandfather and thine to her will."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1.  Hilding: a word derived from the Anglo-Saxon, and used
indiscriminately to denote a young person of either sex.

Note 2.  Wimple: the covering for the neck, worn by secular women as
well as nuns, and either with or without a veil or hood.  It had been in
fashion for two centuries or thereabouts, but was now beginning to be
generally discarded.

Note 3.  In accordance with the custom of the time, by which persons
were commonly named from their birth-places, Edward the First, the
Second, and the Third are respectively designated Edward of Westminster,
of Caernarvon, and of Windsor.

Note 4.  The copped-hat was the high-crowned brimless hat then
fashionable, the parent of the modern one.  An instance of it will be
found in the figure of Bolingbroke, plate xvi. of the illustrations to
Cretan's History of Richard the Second, Archaeologia, vol. xx.

Note 5.  One historian after another has copied Froissart's assertion
that Hugh Le Despenser the elder at his death was an old man of ninety,
and none ever took the trouble to verify the statement; yet the
_post-mortem_ inquisition of his father is extant, certifying that he
was born in the first week in March 1261; so that on October 8, 1326,
the day of his execution, he was only sixty-five.

Note 6.  It will be understood that this was the light in which the
monks regarded Earl Edmund.



CHAPTER FIVE.

THE STORY OF ISABEL.

  "O dumb, dumb lips!  O crushed, crushed heart!
  O grief, past pride, past shame!"

  Miss Muloch.

Mother Joan had arrived at the point closing the last chapter, when the
sharp ringing of the Abbess' little bell announced the end of the
recreation-time; and convent laws being quite as rigid as those of the
Medes and Persians, Philippa was obliged to defer the further
gratification of her curiosity.  When the next recreation-time came, the
blind nun resumed her narrative.

"When Dame Isabelle was lodged at her ease, for she saw first to that,
she ordered her prisoners to be brought before the Prince her son.  She
had the decency not to sit as judge herself; but, in outrage of all
womanliness, she sat herself in the court, near the Prince's seat.  She
would have sat in the seat rather than have missed her end.  The Prince
was wholly governed by his mother; he knew not her true character; and
he was but a lad of fourteen years.  So, when the prisoners were brought
forth, the tigress rose up in her place, and spake openly to the
assembled barons (a shameful thing for a woman to do!) that she and her
son would see that law and justice were rendered to them, according to
their deeds.  She!  That was the barons' place, not hers.  She should
have kept to her distaff.

"Then said my grandfather, bowing his white head, `Ah, Dame!  God grant
us an upright judge, and a just sentence; and that if we cannot have it
in this world, we may find it in another.'

"The charges laid against them were then read by the Marshal; and the
barons gave sentence--of course as Dame Isabelle wished.  The Lord of
Arundel and Surrey, the premier Earl of England, [see Note 1], and the
aged white-haired Earl of Winchester, [see Note 2], were doomed to the
death of traitors.

"Saint Denis' Day--child, it gives me a shudder to name it!  We were
within the castle, and they set up the gibbet before our eyes.  Before
the eyes of the son of the one man, the wife and son of the other!  I
remember catching up Isabel, and running with her into an inner
chamber--any whither to be out of sight of that awful thing.  I
remember, too, that the Lady of Arundel, having seen all she could bear,
fainted away on the rushes, and I laid her gently down, and nursed her
back into life.  But when she came to herself, she cried--`Is it all
over?  O cruel Joan, to have made me live!  I might have died with my
lord.'  At last it was all over: over--for that time.  And God had taken
no notice.  He had not opened the heavens and thundered down His great
ire.  I suppose that must have been on account of some high festival
they had in Heaven in honour of Saint Denis, and God was too busy,
listening to the angels, to have any time for us.

"But that night, ere the dawn, my father softly entered the chamber
where we maidens slept.  He had been closeted half the night with the
King, taking counsel how to escape the cruel jaws of the tigress; and
now he roused us, and bade us farewell.  He and the King would set forth
in a little boat, and endeavour to reach Wales.  They thought us,
however, safer in the castle.  We watched them embark in the grey dawn,
ere men were well astir; and they rowed off toward Wales.  Would God
they had stayed where they were!--but God had not ended the festival of
Saint Denis.

"Twelve days that little boat rode the silver Severn; beaten back,
beaten back at every tide, the waves rough, and the wind contrary.  And
at length Sir Henry Beaumont, the devil whispering to him who were in
the boat, set forth in pursuit.  [See Note 3.]

"We saw them taken.  The Monday after Saint Luke, Edward of Caernarvon,
sometime King of England, and Hugh Le Despenser, sometime Earl of
Gloucester, were led captives into Bristol, and delivered to the
tigress.  But we were not to see them die.  Perhaps Saint Luke had
interceded for us, as it was in his octave.  The King was sent to
Berkeley Castle.  My father they set on the smallest and poorest horse
they could find in the army, clad in an emblazoned surcoat such as he
was used to wear.  From the moment that he was taken, he would touch no
food.  And when they reached Hereford, he was so weak and ill, that Dame
Isabelle began to fear he would escape her hands by a more merciful
death than she designed for him.  So she stayed her course at Hereford
for the Feast of All Saints, and the morrow after she had him brought
forth for trial.  They had need to bear him into her presence, he was so
nearly insensible.  Finding that they could not wake him into life by
speaking to him and calling him, they twined a crown of nettles and set
it on his head.  But he was even then too near death to rouse himself.
So, lest he should die on the spot, they hurried him forth to execution.
He died the death of a traitor; but maybe God was more merciful than
they, and snatched his soul away ere he had suffered all they meant he
should.  I suppose He allowed him to suffer previously, in punishment
for his allying himself with the wicked men of Edingdon: but I trust his
suffering purified his soul, and that God received him.

"Her vengeance thus satiated, Dame Isabelle set out for London.  The
Castle of Arundel was forfeited, and the Lady and her son Richard were
left homeless.  [See Note 4.] We set forth with them, a journey of many
weary days, to join my mother.  But when we reached London, we found all
changed.  Dame Isabelle, on her first coming, had summoned my mother to
surrender the Tower; and she, being affrighted, had resigned her charge,
and was committed to the custody of the Lord de la Zouche.  So we
homeless ones bent our steps to Sempringham, where were two of my
father's sisters, Joan and Alianora; and we prayed the holy nuns there
to grant us shelter in their abode of peace.  The Lord of Hereford gave
an asylum for young Richard.

"Those were peaceful, quiet days we passed at Sempringham; and they were
the last Isabel was to know.  Meanwhile, the Friars Predicants, and in
especial the men of Edingdon and Ashridge, were spreading themselves
throughout the land, working well to bring back the King.  Working too
well; for Dame Isabelle took alarm, and on Saint Maurice's Day, twelve
months after her landing, the King died at Berkeley Castle.  God knew
how: and I think she knew who had sat by his side on the throne, and who
was the mother of his children.  We only heard at Sempringham, that on
that night shrieks of agony rang through the vale of the Severn, and men
woke throughout the valley, and whispered a requiem for the hapless soul
which was departing in such horrible torment.

"But that opened the eyes of the young King (for the Prince of Wales had
been made King; ay, and all the hour of his crowning, Dame Isabelle
stood by, and made believe to weep for her lord): he began to see what a
serpent was his mother; and I daresay Brother John de Gaytenby, the
Friar Predicant who was his confessor, let not the matter sleep.  And no
sooner did Edward of Windsor gain his full power, than he shut up the
wicked Jezebel his mother in the Castle of Rising.  She lived there
twenty years: she died there, fourteen years ago.

"So the tide turned.  The friends of Dame Isabelle died on the scaffold,
four years later, even as _he_ had died; and we heard it at Sempringham,
and knew that God and the saints and angels had taken up our cause at
last.  Child, God's mill grindeth slowly, but it grindeth very small.

"Ere this, Hugh, my brother, had been granted his life by the King, but
not our father's earldom [see Note 5]; and when my father had been dead
only two years, leaving such awful memories--our mother wedded again.
Ah, well! she was our mother.  But, child, I have seen a caterpillar,
shaken rudely from the fragrant petals of a rose, crawl to the next weed
that grew.  She was fair and well-dowered; and against the King's will,
she wedded the Lord de la Zouche, in whose custody she was.

"And now for the end of my woeful tale, which is the story of Isabel
herself.  For, one year later, the Castle of Arundel was given back to
Richard Fitzalan; and two years thereafter the Lady of Arundel died.
Listen a little longer with patience: for the saddest part of the story
is that yet to come.

"When Richard and Isabel went back to the Castle of Arundel, I was a
young novice, just admitted.  And considering the second marriage of our
mother, and the death of the Lady of Arundel, and the extreme youth of
Isabel (who was not yet fourteen), I was permitted to reside very much
with her.  A woeful residence it was; for now began the fourteen
terrible years of my darling's passion.

"For no sooner was his mother's gentle hand removed, than, even on the
very day of her burial, Earl Richard threw off the mask.

"Before that time, I had wonderingly doubted if he loved her.  I knew
then that he hated her.  And I found one other thing, sadder yet--that
she loved him.  I confess unto thee, by the blessed ankle-bones of Saint
Denis, that I never could make out why.  I never saw in him anything to
love; and had I so done, methinks he had soon had that folly out of me.
At first I scarcely understood all.  I used to see livid blue bruises on
her neck and arms, and ask her wherefore they were there; and she would
only flush faintly, and say,--`It is nothing--I struck myself against
something.'  I never knew for months against what she struck.  But she
never complained--not even to me.  She was patient as an angel of God.

"Now and then I used to notice that there came to the castle an aged
man, in the garb of the Friars Predicants; unto whom--and to him only--
Isabel used to confess.  So changed was he from his old self, that I
never knew till long after that this was our father's old confessor,
Giles de Edingdon.  She only said to me that he taught her good things.
If he taught her her saintly endurance, it was good.  But I fear he
taught her other things as well: to hold in light esteem that blessed
doctrine of grace of condignity, whereby man can and doth merit the
favour of God.  And what he gave her instead thereof I know not.  She
used to tell me, but I forget now.  Only once, in an awful hour, she
said unto me, that but for the knowledge he had given her, she could not
have borne her life.

"What was that hour?--Ah! it was the hour, when for the first time he
threw aside all care, even before me, and struck her senseless on the
rushes at my feet.  And I never forgave him.  She forgave him, poor
innocent!--nay, rather, I think she loved him too well to think of
forgiveness.  I never saw love like hers; it would have borne death
itself, and have kissed the murderer's hand in dying.  Some women do
love so.  I never did, nor could.

"But when this awful hour came, and she fell at my feet, as if dead, by
a blow from his hand in anger,--the spirit of my fathers came upon me,
and like a prophetess of woe, child, I stood forth and cursed him!  I
think God spake by me, for words seemed to come from me without my will;
and I said that for two generations the heir of his house should die by
violence in the flower of his age [See Note 6].  Thou mayest see if it
be so; but I never shall.

"And what said he?--He said, bowing his head low,--`Sister Joan La
Despenser is a great flatterer.  Pray, accept my thanks.  Henceforward,
she may perhaps find the calm glades of Shaftesbury more pleasant than
the bowers of Arundel.  At least, I venture to beg that she will make
the trial.'  And he went forth, calling to his hounds.

"Ay, went forth, without another word, and left her lying there at my
feet--her, to save whom one pang of pain I would have laid down my life.
And the portcullis was shut upon me.  I was powerless to save her from
that man: I was to see her again no more.  I did see her again no more
for ever.  I waited till her sense came back, when she said she was not
hurt, and fell to excusing him.  I felt as though I could have torn him
limb from limb.  But that would have pained her.

"And then, when she was restored, I went forth from the Castle of
Arundel.  I had been dismissed by the master; and dearly as I loved her,
I was too proud to be dismissed twice.  So we took our farewell.  Her
soft cheek pressed to mine--for the last time; her dear eyes looking
into mine--for the last time; her sweet, low voice blessing me--for the
last time.

"And what were her last words, saidst thou?  I cannot repeat them
tearlessly, even now.

"`God grant thee the Living Water.'

"Those were they.  She had spoken to me oft--though I had not much cared
to listen, except to her sweet voice--of something whereof this Giles
had told her; some kind of fairy tale, regarding this life as a desert,
and of some Well of pure, fresh water, deep down therein.  I know not
what.  I cared for all that came from her, but I cared nought for what
came only through her from Giles de Edingdon.  But she said God had
given her a draught of that Living Water, and she was at rest.  I know
nothing about it.  But I am glad if anything gave her rest from that
anguish--even a fairy tale.

"Well, after that I saw her no more again.  But now and then, when mine
hunger for her could no longer be appeased, I used to come to the
Convent of Arundel, and send word to Alina, thy nurse, to come to me
thither.  And so, from time to time, I had word of her.

"The years passed on, and with them he grew harder and harder.  He had
hated her, first, I think, from the fancy that my father had been after
some manner the cause of his father's violent end; and after that he
hated her for herself.  And as time passed, and she had no child, he
hated her worse than ever.  But at last, after many years, God gave her
one--thyself.  I thought, perchance, if anything would soften him, thy
smiles and babyish ways might do it.  But--soften him!  It had been
easier to soften a rock of stone.  When he knew that it was only a girl
that was born, he hated her worse than ever.  Three years more; then the
last blow fell.  Earl Henry of Lancaster bade him to his castle.  As
they talked, quoth the Earl,--`I would you had not been a wedded man, my
Lord of Arundel; I had gladly given you one of my daughters.'--`Pure
foy!' quoth he, `but that need be no hindrance, nor shall long.'  Nor
was it.  He sent to our holy Father the Pope--with some lie, I trow--and
received a divorce, and a dispensation to wed Alianora, his cousin, the
young widow of the Lord de Beaumont, son of that Sir Henry that captured
the King and my father.  All the while he told Isabel nothing.  The
meanest of her scullions knew of the coming woe before she knew it.  The
night ere Earl Richard should be re-wedded, he thought proper to dismiss
his discarded wife.

"`Dame,' said he to her, as he rose from the supper-table, `I pray you,
give good ear for a moment to what my chaplain is about to read.'

"He was always cruelly courteous before men.

"She stayed and listened.  Then she grew faint and white--then she
grasped the seat to support her--then she lost hold and sense, and fell
down as if dead before him.  Poor, miserably-crushed heart!  She loved
this monster so well!

"He waited till she came to herself.  Then he gave the last stroke.

"`I depart now,' said he, `to fetch home my bride.  May I beg that the
Lady Isabel La Despenser will quit the castle before she comes.  It
would be very unpleasant to her otherwise.'

"Unpleasant--to Alianora!  And to Isabel, what would it be?  Little he
recked of that.  She had received her dismissal.  He had said to her, in
effect,--`You are my wife, and Lady of Arundel, no more.'

"She lifted herself up a little, and looked into his face.  She knew she
was looking upon him for the last time.  And once more the fervent,
unvalued, long-outraged love broke forth,--once more, for the last time.

"`My lord! my lord!' she wailed.  `Leave me not so, Richard!  Give me
one kiss for farewell!'

"He did not lift her from the ground; he did not kiss her; but he was
not quite silent to that last bitter cry.  He held forth his hand--the
hand which had been uplifted to strike her so often.  She clasped it in
hers, and kissed it many times.  And that was his farewell.

"When he had drawn his hand from her, and was gone forth, she sat a
season like a statue, listening.  She hearkened till she heard him ride
away--on his way to Alianora.  Then, as if some prop that had held her
up were suddenly withdrawn, she fell forward, and lay with her face to
the rushes.  All that awful night she lay there.  Alina came to her, and
strove to lift her, to give her food, to yield her comfort: but she took
no heed of anything.  When the dawn came, she arose, and wrapped herself
in her mantle.  She took no money, no jewels--not an ouche nor a grain
of gold.  Only she wrapped in silk two locks of hair--his and thine.  I
should have left the first behind.  Then, when she was seated on the
horse to depart, the page told her who mounted afore, that his Lord had
given him command to take her to a certain place, which was not to be
told beforehand.

"Alina said she shivered a little at this; but she only answered, `Do my
lord's will.'  Then she asked for thee.  Alina lifted thee up to her,
and she clasped thee close underneath her veil, and kissed thee
tenderly.  And that was thy last mother's kiss."

"Then that is what I remember!" broke in Philippa suddenly.

"It is impossible, child!" answered Joan.  "Thou wert but a babe of
three years old."

"But I do--I am sure I do!" she repeated.

"Have thy way," said Joan.  "If thou so thinkest, I will not gainsay
thee.  Well, she gave thee back in a few minutes; and then she rode
away--never pausing to look back--no man knew whither."

"But what became of her?"

"God wotteth.  Sometimes I hope he murdered her.  One sin more or less
would matter little to the black list of sins on his guilty soul; and
the little pain of dying by violence would have saved Isabel the greater
pain of living through the desolate woe of the future.  But I never
knew, as I told thee.  Nor shall I ever know, till that last day come
when the Great Doom shall be, and he and she shall stand together before
the bar of God.  There shall be an end to her torment then.  It is
something to think that there shall be no end to his."

So, in a tone of bitter, passionate vindictiveness, Joan La Despenser
closed her story.

Philippa sat silent, wondering many things.  If Guy of Ashridge knew any
thing of this, if Giles de Edingdon were yet living, if Agnes the
lavender had ever found out what became of her revered mistress.  And
when she knelt down to tell her beads that night, a very strange and
terrible prayer lingered on her lips the last and most earnestly of all.
It was, that she might never again see her father's face.  She felt
that had she done so, the spirit of the prophetess might have seized
upon her as upon Joan; that, terrified as she had always been of him,
she should now have stood up before him and have cursed him to his face.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1.  Edmund Fitzalan was premier Earl as Earl of Surrey, which title
he acquired by his marriage with Alesia, sister and heir of John de
Warrenne, last Earl of Surrey of the original male line.

Note 2.  Probably owing to the great mortality among the nobles caused
by the French war, a man who survived fifty was regarded as very old in
the reign of Edward the Third.

Note 3.  This is Froissart's account of the events, and his dates have
been mainly followed.  Many writers give a varying narrative, stating
that the King and Earl did reach Wales, and were taken there in a wood.
Their dates are also about a month later.  The inquisitions of the
Despensers, as is usual in the case of attainted persons, do not give
the date of death.

Note 4.  The castle was granted to Edmund Earl of Kent, brother of
Edward the Second; and there, on his attainder and execution, four years
later, his widow and children were arrested.

Note 5.  The earldom did not return to the Despenser family until 1397,
when it was conferred on the great-grandson of the attainted Earl.

Note 6.  Earl Richard, his son, was beheaded in London, in the spring of
1397; Earl Thomas, his grandson, fell at Agincourt, October 13, 1415.



CHAPTER SIX.

ELAINE.

  "No has visto un nino, que viene
  A dar un doblon que tiene,
  Porque le den una flor?"

  Lope de Vega.

Philippa determined to return home by way of Sempringham.  She could not
have given any very cogent reason, except that she wished to see the
place where the only peaceful days of her mother's life had been passed.
Perhaps peace might there come to her also; and she was far enough from
it now.  It would have been strange indeed if peace had dwelt in a heart
where was neither "glory to God" nor "good-will to men."  And while her
veneration for her mother's memory was heightened by her aunt's
narrative, her feeling towards her father, originally a shrinking
timidity, had changed now into active hatred.  Had she at that moment
been summoned to his deathbed, she would either have refused to go near
him at all, or have gone with positive pleasure.

But beside all this, Philippa could not avoid the conclusion that her
salvation was as far from being accomplished as it had been when she
reached Shaftesbury.  She felt further off it than ever; it appeared to
recede from her at every approach.  Very uneasily she remembered Guy's
farewell words,--"God strip you of your own goodness!"  The Living Water
seemed as distant as before; but the thirst grew more intense.  And yet,
like Hagar in the wilderness, the Well was beside her all the time; but
until the Angel of the Lord should open her eyes, she could not see it.

She reached Sempringham, and took up her abode for the night in the
convent, uncertain how long she would remain there.  An apparently
trivial incident decided that question for her.

As Philippa stood at the convent gate, in a mild winter morning, she
heard a soft, sweet voice singing, and set herself to discover whence
the sound proceeded.  The vocalist was readily found,--a little girl of
ten years old, who was sitting on a bank a few yards from the gate, with
a quantity of snowdrops in her lap, which she was trying with partial
success to weave into a wreath.  Philippa--weary of idleness, Books of
Hours, and embroidery--drew near to talk with her.

"What is thy name?" she asked, by way of opening negotiations.

"Elaine," said the child, lifting a pair of timid blue eyes to her
questioner's face.

"And where dwellest thou?"

"Down yonder glade, Lady: my father is Wilfred the convent woodcutter."

"And who taught thee to speak French?"

"The holy sisters, Lady."

"What wert thou singing a minute since?"

The child drooped her head shyly.

"Do not be afraid," said Philippa gently.  "I like to hear singing.
Wilt thou sing it again to me?"

Elaine hesitated a moment; but another glance at Philippa's smiling face
seemed to reassure her, and she sang, in a low voice, to a sweet, weird
tune:--

  "`Quy de cette eaw boyra
  Ancor soyf aura;
  Mays quy de l'eaw boyra
  Que moy luy donneray,
  Jamays soyf n'aura
  A l'eternite.'"

"This must be very widely known," thought Philippa.--"Who taught thee
that--the holy sisters?" she asked of the child.

"No," answered Elaine, shaking her head.  "The Grey Lady."

"And who is the Grey Lady?"

The look with which Elaine replied, showed Philippa that not to know the
Grey Lady was to augur herself unknown, at least in the Vale of
Sempringham.

"Know you not the Grey Lady?  All in the Vale know her."

"Where dwelleth she?"

"Up yonder"--but to Philippa's eyes, Elaine merely pointed to a cluster
of leafless trees on the hill-side.

"And is she one of the holy sisters?"

On this point Elaine was evidently doubtful.  The Grey Lady did not
dwell in the convent, nor in any convent; she lived all alone, therefore
it was plain that she was not a sister.  But she was always habited in
grey wherefore men called her the Grey Lady.  No--she had no other name.

"A recluse, manifestly," said Philippa to herself; "the child does not
understand.  But is she an anchoritess or an eremitess?--Does she ever
leave her cell?"  [See Note 1.]

"Lady, she tendeth all the sick hereabout.  She is a friend of every
woman in the Vale.  My mother saith, an' it like you, that where there
is any wound to heal, or heart to comfort, there is the Grey Lady.  And
she saith she hath a wonderful power of healing, as well for mind as
body.  When Edeline our neighbour lost all her four children by fever
between the two Saint Agneses, [see Note 2], nobody could comfort her
till the Grey Lady came.  And when Ida my playmate lay dying, and very
fearful of death, she said even the holy priest did her not so much good
as the Grey Lady.  I think," ended Elaine softly, "she must be an angel
in disguise."

The child evidently spoke her thought literally.

"I will wait and see this Grey Lady," thought Philippa.  "Let me see if
she can teach and comfort me.  Ever since Guy of Ashridge visited
Kilquyt, I seem to have been going further from comfort every day.--
Canst thou lead me to the Grey Lady's cell?"

"I could; but she is not now there, Lady."

"When will she be there?"

"To-morrow, when the shadow beginneth to lengthen," replied Elaine, who
was evidently well acquainted with the Grey Lady's proceedings.

"Then to-morrow, when the shadow beginneth to lengthen, thou shalt come
to the convent gate, and I will meet with thee.  Will thy mother give
thee leave?"

"Ay.  She alway giveth me leave to visit the Grey Lady."

The appointment was made, and Philippa turned back to the convent.

"I was searching you, Lady de Sergeaux," said the portress, when
Philippa re-entered the gate.  "During your absence, there came to the
priory close by a messenger from Arundel on his road toward Hereford;
and hearing that the Lady de Sergeaux was with us, he sent word through
a lay-brother that he would gladly have speech of you."

"A messenger from Arundel!  What can he want with me?"

Philippa felt that all messengers from Arundel would be very unwelcome
to her.  She added, rather ungraciously, that "perhaps she had better
see him."  She passed into the guest-chamber, whither in a few minutes
the messenger came to her.  He was a page, habited in deep mourning; and
Philippa recognised him at once as the personal "varlet" attendant on
the Countess.  The thought rose to her mind that the Earl might have
fallen in Gascony.

"God keep thee, good Hubert!" she said.  "Be thy tidings evil?"

"As evil as they might be, Lady," answered the page sadly.  "Two days
before the feast of Saint Hilary, our Lady the Countess Alianora was
commanded to God."

A tumult of conflicting feelings went surging through Philippa's heart
and brain.

"Was thy Lord at home?"

She inwardly hoped that he was not.  It was only fitting, said the
vindictive hatred which had usurped the place of her conscience, that
Alianora of Lancaster should feel something of that to which she had
helped to doom Isabel La Despenser.

"Lady, no.  Our Lord abideth in Gascony, with the Duke of Lancaster."

Philippa was not sorry to hear it; for her heart was full of "envy,
hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

When the shadow began to lengthen on the following day, Philippa wrapped
her mantle around her, and called to her damsel to follow.  Her varlet
followed also, at a little distance behind.  She found Elaine and a
younger child waiting for her outside the gate.  Elaine introduced her
companion as her sister Annora.  Annora proved much less shy than
Elaine, and far more ready with her communications.  But she was not
asked many questions; for as they turned away from the convent gate,
they were met by a monk in the Dominican habit, and Philippa knew
directly the face of Guy of Ashridge.

"Christ save you, Father," said she.

"And you, daughter," he answered.  "Are you yet seeking comfort, or have
you found it?"

"I am further from it than ever," she replied, rather petulantly.

"No wonder," said Guy.  "For comfort hath another name, which is--
Christ.  Who is a stranger to the One shall needs be a stranger to the
other."

"I have tried hard to make my salvation," responded Philippa more sadly;
"but as yet I cannot do it."

"Nor will you, though you could try a thousand years," answered Guy.
"That is a manufacture beyond saints and angels, and how then shall you
do it?"

"Who then can do it?"

"God," said Guy, solemnly.

"God hates me," replied Philippa, under her breath.  "He hateth all mine
house.  For nigh fifty years, He hath sent us sorrow upon sorrow, and
hath crushed us down into the dust of death."

"Poor blindling! is that a proof that He hateth you?" answered Guy more
gently.  "Well, it is true at times, when the father sendeth a varlet in
haste to save the child from falling over a precipice, the child--whose
heart is set on some fair flower on the rock below--doth think it cruel.
You are that child; and your trouble is the varlet God hath sent after
you."

"He hath sent His whole meynie, then," said Philippa bitterly.

"Then the child will not come to the Father?" said Guy, softly.

Philippa was silent.

"Is the flower so fair, that you will risk life for it?" pursued the
monk.  "Nay, not risk--that is a word implying doubt, and here is none.
So fair, then, that you will throw life away for it?  And is the Father
not fair and precious in your eyes, that you are in so little haste to
come to Him?  Daughter, what shall it profit you, if you gain the whole
world--and lose your own soul?"

"Father, you are too hard upon me!" cried Philippa in a pained tone, and
resisting with some difficulty a strong inclination to shed tears.  "I
would come to God, but I know not how, nor do you tell me.  God is afar
off, and hath no leisure nor will to think on me; nor can I presume to
approach Him without the holy saints to intercede for me.  I have sought
their intercession hundreds of times.  It is not I that am unwilling to
be saved; and you speak to me as if you thought it so.  It is God that
will not save me.  I have done all I can."

"O fool, and slow of heart to believe!" earnestly answered Guy.  "Can it
be God, when He cared so much for you that He sent His blessed Son down
from Heaven to die for your salvation?  Beware how you accuse the Lord.
I tell you again, it is not His will that opposeth itself to your
happiness, but your own.  You have built up a wall of your own
excellencies that you cannot see God; and then you cry, `He hath hidden
Himself from me.'  Pull down your miserable mud walls, and let the light
of Heaven shine in upon you.  Christ will save you with no half nor
quarter salvation.  He will not let you lay the foundation whereon He
shall build.  He will not tear His fair shining robe of righteousness to
patch your worthless rags.  With Him, either not at all, or all in all."

"But what would you have me do?" said Philippa, in a vexed tone.

"Believe," replied Guy.

"Believe what?" said she.

"`Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.'"

"The easiest thing in the world," answered Philippa, a little
contemptuously.

"Is it so?" responded the monk, with a pitying smile.  "It seems to me
that you have found it since last June the hardest thing in the world.
Whither go you now?" he asked, suddenly changing his tone.

"I go," she rejoined, "with this child, to the cell of an eremitess of
whom she hath told me, `that hath,' quoth she, `great power of
comforting the sorrowful.'  All about here seem to know her.  They call
her the Grey Lady."

Guy looked on her long and earnestly, an expression creeping over his
face which Philippa could not understand.

"Be it so," he said at last.  "`I will lead the blind by a way that they
know not.'  Let my voice be silent when He speaketh.  Verily"--and his
voice fell to a softer tone--"I never passed through the deep waters
wherein she has waded; nor, perchance, where you have.  Let God speak to
you through her.  Go your way."

"But who is she--this Grey Lady?"

Philippa asked in vain.  Guy either did not hear her, or would not
answer.  He walked rapidly down the hill, with only "Farewell!" as he
passed her; and she went her way, to meet her fate--rather, to meet
God's providence--in the cell of the Grey Lady.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1.  Anchorites never left their cells, though they received
visitors within them, and sometimes taught children; hermits wandered
about freely.

Note 2.  Saint Agnes' Day is January 21; but the 28th, instead of the
octave of Saint Agnes, was commonly called Saint Agnes the second.



CHAPTER SEVEN.

IN THE CELL OF THE GREY LADY.

  "Blood must be my body's balmer,--
  While my soule, like peaceful palmer,
  Travelleth toward the Land of Heaven,
  Other balm will not be given."

  Sir Walter Raleigh.

Elaine tapped softly on the weatherbeaten door of the cell.  It was
merely hollowed out in the rock, and built up in front, with a low door
and a very little window.

"Who is it?" asked a soft voice from within.

"Elaine and Annora," replied the little girl.

"Come in, my children."

Motioning Philippa to wait for her an instant, Elaine lifted the latch
and entered, half closing the door behind her.  Some low-toned
conversation followed within the cell; and then Elaine opened the door,
and asked Philippa to enter.  The Grey Lady stood before her.

What she saw was a tall, slender, delicate figure, attired in dark grey.
The figure alone was visible, for over the face the veil was drawn
down.  But Philippa's own knowledge of aristocratic life told her in an
instant that the reverence with which she was received was that of a
high-born lady.  It was plain that the eremitess was no peasant.

Elaine seemed to know that she was no longer wanted, and she drew Annora
away.  The children went dancing through the wood, and Philippa,
desiring Lena and Oliver to await her pleasure, shut the door of the
cell.

"Mother," she began--for recluses were addressed as professed nuns, and
were indeed regarded as the holiest of all celibates--"I desire your
help."

"For body or soul?" was the reply.

"For the soul--for the life," said Philippa.

"Ay," replied the eremitess; "the soul is the life."

"Know you Guy of Ashridge?" asked Philippa.

The Grey Lady bowed her head.

"I have confessed to him, and he hath dealt hardly with me.  He saith I
will not be saved; and I wish to be saved.  He tells me to come to
Christ, and I know not how to come, and he saith he cannot make me
understand how.  He saith God loveth me, because He hath given me a very
desolate and unhappy life; and I think He hateth me by that token.  In
short, Father Guy tells me to do what I cannot do, and then he saith I
will not do it.  Will you teach me, and comfort me, if you can?  The
monk only makes me more unhappy.  And I do not want to be unhappy.  I
want comfort--I want rest--I want peace.  Tell me how to obtain it!"

"No one wishes to be unhappy," said the eremitess, in her gentle
accents; "but sometimes we mistake the medicine we need.  Before I can
give you medicine, I must know your disease."

"My disease is weariness and sorrow," answered Philippa.  "I love none,
and none loveth me.  None hath ever loved me.  I hate all men."

"And God?"

"I do not know God," she said, her voice sinking.  "He is afar off, and
will come no nearer."

"Or you are afar off, and will go no nearer?  Which is it?"

"I think it is the first," she answered; "Guy of Ashridge will have it
to be the second.  I cannot get at God--that is all I know.  And it is
not for want of praying.  I have begged the intercession of my patron,
the holy Apostle Saint Philip, hundreds of times."

"Do you know why you cannot get at God?"

"No.  If you can guess, tell me why it is."

"Because you have gone the wrong way.  You have not found the door.  You
are trying to break through over the wall.  And `he that entereth not by
the door into the sheep-fold, but climbeth up some other way, the same
is a thief and a robber.'"

"Explain to me what you mean, Mother, an' it like you."

"You know how Adam sinned in Paradise?" asked the Grey Lady.

"When he and Eva disobeyed God, and ate of the fruit of the forbidden
tree?  Yes, I have heard that."

"He built up a terrible wall between him and God.  Every man, as born
into this world, is on the hither side of that wall.  He knoweth not
God, he loveth not God, he careth not for God."

"But that is not the case with me," objected Philippa; "for I do wish
for Him.  I want some one to love me; and I should not mind if it were
God.  Even He were better than none."

The Grey Lady's veil trembled a little, as Philippa thought; but she sat
meditating for an instant.

"Before I answer your last remark," she said, "will you tell me a little
of your life?  I might know better how to reply.  You are a married
woman, of course, for your dress is not that of a nun, nor of a widow.
Have you children?  Are your parents living?"

"I have no child," said Philippa: and the Grey Lady's penetration must
have been obtuse if she were unable to detect a tone of deep sadness
underlying the words.  "And parents--living--did you ask me?  By Mary,
Mother and Maiden, I have but one living, and I hate--I hate him!"  The
passionate energy with which the last words were spoken told its own
tale.

"Then it is no marvel," answered the Grey Lady, in a very different tone
from Philippa's, "that you come to me with a tale of sorrow.  Where
there is hatred there can be no peace; and without peace there can be no
hope."

"Hope!" exclaimed Philippa, bitterly.  "What is there for me to hope?
Who ever cared for me?  Who ever asked me if I were happy?  Nobody loves
me--why should I love anybody?"

"`God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us.'"

The words fell like cooling water on the hot fire of Philippa's
bitterness; but she made no answer.

"Had God waited for us to love Him," resumed the eremitess, "where had
we been now?  `We love Him, because He first loved us.'"

"He never loved me," answered Philippa, mournfully.

"He loved me so much," said the Grey Lady, softly, "that He made the way
rough, that He might help me over it; He made the waters deep, that He
might carry me through them; He caused the rain to fall heavily, that I
might run to Him for shelter; He made `mine earthly house of this
tabernacle' dreary and cold, that I might find the rest, and light, and
warmth of His home above so much the sweeter.  Yea, He made me
friendless, that I might seek and find in Jesu Christ the one Friend who
would never forsake me, the one love that would never weary nor wax
cold."

Philippa shook her head.  She had never looked at her troubles in this
light "But if the way be thus rough, and yet you will walk in it alone,
though your feet be bleeding; if the waters be deep, and yet you will
strive to ford them unaided; if the house be drear and lonely, and yet
you will not rise up and go home--is it any wonder that you are
sorrowful, or that you do not know Him whose love you put thus away from
you?  And you tell me that God's love were better to you than none!
Better than none!--better than any, better than all!  Man's love can
save from some afflictions, I grant: but from how many it can not!  Can
human love keep you from sickness?--from sorrow?--from poverty?--from
death?  Yet the love of Christ can take the sting from all these,--can
keep you calm and peaceful through them all.  They will remain, and you
will feel them; but the sting will be gone.  There will be an underlying
calm; the wind may ruffle the surface, but it cannot reach beneath.  The
lamb is safe in the arms of the Shepherd, but it does not hold itself
there.  He who shed His blood for us on the rood keepeth us safe, and
none shall be able to pluck us out of His hand.  O Lady, if `thou
knewest the gift of God, thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would
have given thee Living Water.'"

"They tell me of that Living Water, one and all; and I would fain drink
thereof; but I am in the desert, and the Well is afar off, and I know
not where to find it."  Philippa spoke not angrily now, but very
sorrowfully.

"And `thou hast nothing to draw with, and the Well is deep.'"

"That is just what I feel," said Philippa, earnestly.

"Yet it is close beside you," answered the Grey Lady.  "The water is
drawn, and ready.  All that is needed is your outstretched hand to take
it.  Christ giveth the Living Water; Christ is the Door by which, if any
man enter in, he shall be saved; Christ is our peace with God.  You have
not to make peace; for them that take Christ's salvation, peace is made.
You can never make peace: it took Christ to make it.  Your salvation--
if you be saved at all--was finished thirteen hundred years ago.  God
hath provided this salvation for you, and all your life He hath been
holding it forth to you--hath been calling you by all these your sorrows
to come and take it.  So many years as you have lived in this world, so
many years you have grieved Him by turning a deaf ear and a cold heart
towards His great heart and open hand held forth to you--towards His
loving voice bidding you come to Him.  Oh grieve Him no longer!  Let
your own works, your own goodness, your own sufferings, drop from you as
the cast-off rags of a beggar, and wrap yourself in the fair white robe
of righteousness which the King giveth you--which He hath wrought
Himself on purpose for you,--for which He asks no price from you, for He
paid the price Himself in His own blood.  He came not to live, and work,
and suffer, for Himself, but for you.  You complain that none loveth
you: all these years there hath been love unutterable waiting for you,
and you will not take it."

It seemed to Philippa a very fair picture.  Never before had the Garden
of God looked so beautiful, to her who stood waiting without the gate.
But there appeared to be barriers between it and her, which she could
not pass: and in especial one loomed up before her, dark and
insuperable.

"But--must I forgive my father?"

"You must come to Christ ere you do any thing.  After that--when He hath
given you His forgiving Spirit, and His strength to forgive--certainly
you must forgive your father."

"Whatever he hath done?"

"Whatever he hath done."

"I can never do that," replied Philippa, yet rather regretfully than
angrily.  "What he did to me I might; but--"

"I know," said the Grey Lady quietly, when Philippa paused.  "It _is_
easier to forgive one's own wrongs than those of others.  I think your
heart is not quite so loveless as you would persuade yourself."

"To the dead--no," said Philippa huskily.  "But to any who could love me
in return--" and she paused again, leaving her sentence unended as
before.  "No, I never could forgive him."

"Never, of yourself," was the answer.  "But whoso taketh Christ for his
Priest to atone, taketh Christ also for his King to govern.  In him God
worketh, bringing forth from his soul graces which He Himself hath first
put there--graces which the natural heart never can bring forth.  Faith
is the first of these; then love; and then obedience.  And both love and
obedience teach forgiveness.  `If ye forgive not men their trespasses,
how then shall your Father which is in Heaven forgive your trespasses?'"

"Then," said Philippa, after a minute's silence, during which she was
deeply meditating, "what we give to God is these graces of which you
speak?--we give Him faith, and love, and obedience?"

"Assuredly--when He hath first implanted all within us."

"But what do we give of ourselves?" asked Philippa in a puzzled tone.

"We give _ourselves_."

"This giving of ourselves, then," pursued Philippa slowly, "maketh the
grace of condignity?"

"We give to God," replied the low voice of the eremitess, "ourselves,
and our sins.  The last He purgeth away, and casteth them into the
depths of the sea.  Is there grace of condignity in them?  And for us,
when our sins are forgiven, and our souls cleansed, we are for ever
committing further sin, for ever needing fresh cleansing and renewed
pardon.  Is there grace of condignity, then, in us?"

"But where do you allow the grace of condignity?"

"I allow it not at all."

Philippa shrank back a little.  In her eyes, this was heresy.

"You love not that," said the Grey Lady gently.  "But can you find any
other way of salvation that will stand with the dignity of God?  If man
save himself, then is Christ no Saviour; if man take the first step
towards God, then is Christ no Author, but only the Finisher of faith."

"It seems to me," answered Philippa rather coldly, "that such a view as
yours detracts from the dignity of man."

She could not see the smile that crossed the lips of the eremitess.

"Most certainly it does," said she.

"And God made man," objected Philippa.  "To injure the dignity of man,
therefore, is to affront the dignity of God."

"Dignity fell with Adam," said the Grey Lady.  "Satan fatally injured
the dignity of man, when he crept into Eden.  Man hath none left now,
but only as he returneth unto God.  And do you think there be any grace
of condignity in a beggar, when he holdeth forth his hand to receive a
garment in the convent dole?  Is it such a condescension in him to
accept the coat given to him, that he thereby earneth it of merit?  Yet
this, and less than this, is all that man can do toward God."

"Are you one of the Boni-Homines?" asked Philippa suddenly.

She was beginning to recognise their doctrines now.

"The family of God are one," answered the Grey Lady, rather evasively.
"He teacheth not different things to divers of His people, though He
lead them by varying ways to the knowledge of the one truth."

"But are you one of the Boni-Homines?"  Philippa repeated.

"By birth--no."

"No," echoed Philippa, "I should think not, by birth.  Your accent and
your manners show you high-born; and they are low-born varlets--common
people."

"The common people," answered the Grey Lady, "are usually those who hear
Christ the most gladly.  `Not many noble are called;' yet, thank God, a
few.  But do you, then, count Archbishop Bradwardine, or Bishop
Grosteste, or William de Edingdon, Bishop of Winchester and Chancellor
of England,--among the common people?"

"They were not among _them_?" exclaimed Philippa in contemptuous
surprise.

"Trust me, but they were,--two of them at least; and the third preached
their doctrines, though he went not out from them."

"I could not have believed it!"

"`The wind bloweth where it listeth,'" said the Grey Lady, softly: but
she hardly spoke to her visitor.

Philippa rose.  "I thank you for your counsel," she said.

"And you mean, _not_ to follow it?" was the gentle response.

"I do not know what I mean to do," she said honestly.  "I want to do
right; but I cannot believe it right to deny the grace of condignity.
It is so blessed a doctrine!  How else shall men merit the favour of
God?  And I do not perceive, by your view, how men approach God at all."

"By God approaching them," said the eremitess.  "`Whosoever will, let
him take the Water of Life freely.'  But God provideth the water; man
only receiveth it; and the will to receive it is of God, not of man's
own deed and effort.  `It is God that worketh in us.'  Salvation is `not
of works, lest any man should boast.'"

"That is not the doctrine of holy Church," answered Philippa, somewhat
offended.

"It is the doctrine of Saint Paul," was the quiet rejoinder, "for the
words I have just spoken are not mine, but his."

"Are you certain of that, Mother?"

"Quite certain."

"Who told you them?"

The Grey Lady turned, and took from a rough shelf or ledge, scooped out
in the rocky wall of the little cavern, a small brown-covered volume.

"I know not if you can read," she said, offering the book to Lady
Sergeaux; "but there are the words."

The little volume was no continuous Book of Scripture, but consisted of
passages extracted almost at random, of varying lengths, apparently just
as certain paragraphs had attracted her when she heard or read them.

"Yes, I can read.  My nurse taught me," said Philippa, taking the little
book from her hand.

But her eyes lighted, the first thing, upon a passage which enchained
them; and she read no further.

"Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again; but whosoever
drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst."



CHAPTER EIGHT.

THE VEIL UPLIFTED.

  "Household names, that used to flutter
  Through your laughter unawares,--
  God's Divine Name ye can utter
  With less trembling, in your prayers."

  Elizabeth B. Browning.

Philippa sat down again with the book in her hand.  Her mood had changed
suddenly at the sight of the text, which she instantly guessed to be the
original of her well-remembered device.

"I need not go yet," she said, "unless I weary you, Mother."

"I am never wearied of the Master's work," answered the low voice.

Lady Sergeaux opened the door of the cell.

"Lena and Oliver," she called, "you can return to the convent, and come
hither for me again ere the dusk falleth.  I shall abide a season with
this holy Mother."

"But your Ladyship will ere that be faint for hunger," objected Lena.

"No,--I will take care of that," replied the Grey Lady, ere Philippa
could answer.

Lena louted, and departed with Oliver, and her mistress again closed the
door of the cell.  The Grey Lady set bread before her, and honey, with a
cup of milk, bidding her eat.

"Thank you, Mother, but I am not hungry yet," said Philippa.

"You ought to be.  You had better eat," was the quiet answer.

And quiet as the voice was, it had a tone of authority which Philippa
involuntarily and unconsciously obeyed.  And while she ate, her hostess
in her turn became the questioner.

"Are you a knight's wife?"

"I am the wife of Sir Richard Sergeaux, a knight of Cornwall," said
Philippa.  "My lord is away in Gascony, in the train of the Earl of
Arundel, who accompanies the Duke of Lancaster, at present Governor of
those parts.  While he is absent, I hope to be able to make my salvation
in retreat, and to quiet my conscience."

The Grey Lady made no reply.  Philippa almost expected her to ask if her
conscience were quiet, or how much of her salvation she had made.  Guy
of Ashridge, she thought, would have preached a sermon on that text.
But no answer came from the veiled figure, only her head drooped upon
her hand as if she were tired.

"Now I am wearying you," said Philippa reproachfully.  "I ought to have
gone when I first thought thereof."

"No," said the Grey Lady.

Her voice, if possible, was even softer than before, but Philippa could
not avoid detecting in it a cadence of pain so intense that she began to
wonder if she were ill, or what portion of her speech could possibly
have caused it.

"Are you ill, Mother?" she asked compassionately.

The eremitess lifted her head; and her voice was again calm.

"I thank you,--no.  Let us not speak of ourselves, but of God."

"Mother, I wish to ask you something," said Philippa rather doubtfully,
for she did not wish to pain her again, yet she deemed her coming
question necessary.

"Ask what you will, Lady de Sergeaux."

There was no sad cadence now in the gentle voice.

"I desire to know--for so only can you really help me--if you know
yourself what it is to be unloved."

Once more Philippa saw the grey veil tremble.

"I know it--well."  But the words were uttered scarcely above a whisper.

"I meant to ask you that at first, and we name upon another subject.
But I am satisfied if you know it.  And now tell me, how may any be
content under such a trial?  How may a weary, thirsting heart, come to
drink of that water which he that drinketh shall thirst no more?
Mother, all my life I have been drinking of many wells, but I never yet
came to this Well.  `Ancor soyf j'ay:' tell me how I must labour, where
I must go, to find that Well whereof the drinker

  "`Jamays soyf n'aura
  A l'eternite'?"

"Who taught you those lines?" asked the eremitess quickly.

"I found them in the device of a jewel," replied Philippa.

"Strange!" said the recluse; but she did not explain why she thought it
so.  "Lady, the Living Water is the gift of God; or rather, it is God.
And the heart of man was never meant to be satisfied with anything
beneath God."

"But the heart of woman, at least," said Philippa, "for I am not a man--
is often satisfied with things beneath God."

"It often rests in them," said the Grey Lady; "but I doubt whether it is
satisfied.  That is a strong word.  Are you?"

"I am most unsatisfied," answered Philippa; "otherwise I had not come to
you.  I want rest."

"And yet Christ hath been saying all your life, to you, as to
others,--`Come unto Me, all ye that travail and are weary laden, and I
will give you rest.'"

"He never gave it me."

"Because you never came for it."

"I wonder if He can give it," said Philippa, sighing.

"Trust me that He can.  I never knew it till I came to Him."

"But are you at rest?  You scarcely looked so just now."

"At rest," said the Grey Lady, "except when a breeze of earth stirs the
soul which should be soaring above earth--when the dreams of earth come
like a thick curtain between that soul and the hope of that Heaven--as
it was just now."

"Then you are not exempt from that?"

"In coming to Christ for rest, we do not leave our human hearts and our
human infirmities behind us--assuredly not."

"Then do you think it wrong to desire to beloved?"

"Not wrong to desire Christ's love."

"But to desire the love of some human being, or of any human being?"

The eremitess paused an instant before she answered.

"I should condemn myself if I said so," she replied in a low tone, the
sad cadence returning to her voice.  "I must leave that with God.  He
hath undertaken to purge me from sin, and He knows what is sin.  If that
be so, He will purge me from it.  I have put myself in His hands, to be
dealt with as pleaseth Him; and my Physician will give me the medicines
which He seeth me to need.  Let me counsel you to do the same."

"Yet what pleaseth Him might not please me."

"It would be strange if it did."

"Why?" said Philippa.

"Because it is your nature to love sin, and it is His nature to love
holiness.  And what we love, we become.  He that loveth sin must needs
be a sinner."

"I do not think I love sin," rejoined Philippa, rather offended.

"That is because you cannot see yourself."

Just what Guy of Ashridge had told her; but not more palatable now than
it had been then.

"What is sin?" asked the Grey Lady.

Philippa was ready with a list--of sins which she felt certain she had
not committed.

"Give me leave to add one," said the eremitess.  "Pride is sin; nay, it
is the abominable sin which God hateth.  And is there no pride in you,
Lady de Sergeaux?  You tell me you cannot forgive your own father.  Now
I know nothing of you, nor of him; but if you could see yourself as you
stand in God's sight--whatever it be that he hath done--you would know
yourself to be as black a sinner as he.  Where, then, is your
superiority?  You have as much need to be forgiven."

"But I have _not_!" cried Philippa, in no dulcet tones, her annoyance
getting the better of her civility.  "I never was a murderer!  I never
turned coldly away from one that loved me--for none ever did love me.  I
never crushed a loving, faithful heart down into the dust.  I never
brought a child up like a stranger.  I never--stay, I will go no further
into the catalogue.  But I know I am not such a sinner as he--nay, I am
not to be compared to him."

"And have you," asked the Grey Lady, very gently, "turned no cold ear to
the loving voice of Christ?  Have you not kept far away from the
heavenly Father?  Have you not grieved the Holy Spirit of God?  May it
not be said to you, as our Lord said to the Jews of old time,--`Ye will
not come to Me, that ye might have life'?"

It was only what Guy of Ashridge had said before.  But this time there
seemed to be a power with the words which had not gone with his.
Philippa was silent.  She had no answer to make.

"You are right," she said after a long pause.  "I have done all this;
but I never saw it before.  Mother, the next time you are at the holy
mass, will you pray for me?"

"Why wait till then?" was the rejoinder.  "Let us tell Him so now."

And, surprised as she was at the proposal, Philippa knelt down.

"Thank you, and the holy saints bless you," she said, as she rose.  "Now
I must go; and I hear Lena's voice without.  But ere I depart, may I ask
you one thing?"

"Anything."

"What could I possibly have said that pained you?  For that something
did pain you I am sure.  I am sorry for it, whatever it may have been."

The soft voice resumed its troubled tone.

"It was only," said the Grey Lady, "that you uttered a name which has
not been named in mine hearing for twenty-seven years: you told me
where, and doing what, was one of whom and of whose doings I had thought
never to hear any more.  One, of whom I try never to think, save when I
am praying for him, or in the night when I am alone with God, and can
ask Him to pardon me if I sin."

"But whom did I name?" said Philippa, in an astonished tone.  "Have I
spoken of any but of my husband?  Do you know him?"

"I have never heard of him before to-day, nor of you."

"I think I did mention the Duke of Lancaster."

A shake of the head negatived this suggestion.

"Well, I named none else," pursued Philippa, "saving the Earl of
Arundel; and you cannot know him."

Even then she felt an intense repugnance to saying, "My father."  But,
much to her surprise, the Grey Lady slowly bowed her head.

"And in what manner," began Philippa, "can you know--"

But before she uttered another word, a suspicion which almost terrified
her began to steal over her.  She threw herself on her knees at the feet
of the Grey Lady, and grasped her arm tightly.

"All the holy saints have mercy upon us!--are you Isabel La Despenser?"

It seemed an hour to Philippa ere the answer came.  And it came in a
tone so low and quivering that she only just heard it.

"I was."

And then a great cry of mingled joy and anguish rang through the lonely
cell.

"Mother! mine own mother!  I am Philippa Fitzalan!"

There was no cry from Isabel.  She only held out her arms; and in an
embrace as close and tender as that with which they had parted, the
long-separated mother and daughter met.



CHAPTER NINE.

TOGETHER.

  "Woe to the eye that sheds no tears -
  No tears for God to wipe away!"

  "G.E.M."

"And is it so hard to forgive?" asked the soft voice of Isabel.

"I will try, but it seems impossible," responded Philippa.  "How can any
forgive injuries that reach down to the very root of the heart and
life?"

"My child," said Isabel, "he that injureth followeth after Satan; but he
that forgiveth followeth after God.  It is because our great debt to God
is too mighty for our bounded sight, and we cannot reach to the ends
thereof, that we are so ready to require of our fellow-debtors the small
and sorry sum owed to ourselves.  `He that loveth not his brother whom
he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?'  And can any
love and yet not forgive?"

"It is sometimes easier to love one ere he be seen than after," said
Philippa, sarcastically.

Isabel smiled rather sadly, for the latent thought in her daughter's
mind was only too apparent to her.  Had Philippa known as little of her
father as of her mother, her feeling towards him would have been far
less bitter.  But there was no other answer.  Even though twenty-seven
years lay between that day and the June morning on which she had quitted
Arundel, Isabel could not trust herself to speak of Richard Fitzalan.
She dared not run the risk of re-opening the wound, by looking to see
whether it had healed.

"Mother," said Philippa suddenly, "thou wilt come with me to Kilquyt?"

"For a time," answered Isabel, "if thine husband assent thereto."

"I shall not ask him," said Philippa, with a slight pout.

"Then I shall not go," replied Isabel quietly.  "I will not enter his
house without his permission."

Philippa's surprise and disappointment were legible in her face.

"But, mother, thou knowest not my lord," she interposed.  "There is not
in all the world a man more wearisome to dwell withal.  Every thing I
do, he dislikes; and every thing I wish to do, he forbids.  I am
thankful for his absence, for when he is at home, from dawn to dusk he
doth nought save to find fault with me."

But, notwithstanding her remonstrance, Philippa had fathomed her
mother's motive in thus answering.  Sir Richard possessed little of his
own; he was almost wholly dependent on the Earl her father; and had it
pleased that gentleman to revoke his grant of manors to herself and her
husband, they would have been almost ruined.  And Philippa knew quite
enough of Earl Richard the Copped-Hat to be aware that few tidings would
be so unwelcome at Arundel as those which conveyed the fact of Isabel's
presence at Kilquyt.  Her mother's uplifted hand stopped her from saying
more.

"Hush, my daughter!" said the low voice.  "Repay not thou by finding
fault in return.  `What glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your
faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well and suffer
for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.'"

"I am not so patient as you, mother," answered Philippa, shaking her
head.  "Perhaps it were better for me if I were.  But dost thou mean
that I must really ask my lord's leave ere thou wilt come with me?"

"I do mean it."

"And thou sayest, `for a time'--wilt thou not dwell with me?"

"The vows of the Lord are upon me," replied Isabel, gravely.  "I cannot
forsake the place wherein He hath set me, the work which He hath given
me to do.  I will visit thee, and my sister also; but that done, I must
return hither."

"But dost thou mean to live and die in yonder cell?"

It was in the recreation-room of the Convent that they were conversing.

"Even so, my daughter."  [See Note 1.]

Philippa's countenance fell.  It seemed very hard to part again when
they had but just found each other.  If this were religion, it must be
difficult work to be religious.  Yet she was more disappointed than
surprised, especially when the first momentary annoyance was past.

"My child," said Isabel softly, seeing her disappointment, "if I err in
thus speaking, I pray God to pardon me.  I can but follow what I see
right; and `to him that esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him it is
unclean.'  How can I forsake the hearts that look to me for help
throughout this valley?  And if thou have need of me, thou canst always
come, or send for me."

This gentle, apologetic explanation touched Philippa the more, because
she felt that in the like case, she could not herself have condescended
to make it.

The next thing to be done was to write to Sir Richard.  This Philippa
was unable to do personally, since the art of handling the pen had
formed no part of her education.  Her mother did it for her; for Isabel
had been solidly and elaborately instructed by Giles de Edingdon, under
the superintendence of the King's Confessor, Luke de Wodeford, also a
Predicant Friar.  The letter had to be directed very much at random,--to
"Sir Richard Sergeaux, of the Duke of Lancaster's following, at
Bordeaux, or wherever he may be found."  Fortunately for Philippa, the
Prior of the neighbouring monastery was just despatching his cellarer to
London on conventual business: and he undertook to convey her letter to
the Savoy Palace, whence it would be forwarded with the next despatches
sent to John of Gaunt.  Philippa, in whose name the letter was written,
requested her husband to reply to her at Shaftesbury, whither she and
Isabel meant to proceed at once.

The spring was in its full beauty when they reached Shaftesbury.
Philippa had not found an opportunity to let the Abbess know of her
coming, but she was very cordially welcomed by that good-natured dame.
The recreation-bell sounded while they were conversing, and at
Philippa's desire the Abbess sent for Mother Joan to the guest-chamber.
Sister Senicula led her in.

"How is it with you, Aunt?" said Philippa affectionately.  "I have
returned hither, as you may hear."

"Ah!  Is it thou, child?" said the blind nun in answer.  "I fare
reasonably well, as a blind woman may.  I am glad thou hast come hither
again."

It evidently cost Isabel much to make herself known to the sister from
whom she had parted in such painful circumstances, thirty-seven years
before.  For a few moments longer, she did not speak, and Philippa
waited for her.  At last Isabel said in a choked voice--"Sister Joan!"

"Holy Virgin!" exclaimed the blind woman; "who called me that?"

"One that thou knewest once," answered Isabel's quivering voice.

"From Heaven?" cried Joan almost wildly.  "Can the dead come back
again?"  And she stretched forth her hands in the direction from which
the sound of her sister's voice had come.

"No, but the living may," said Isabel, kneeling down by her, and
clasping her arms around her.

"Isabel!"  And Joan's trembling hands were passed over her face, as if
to assure herself that her ears had not deceived her.  "It can be no
voice but thine.  Holy Virgin, I thank thee!"

The Abbess broke in, in a manner which, though well-meant, was
exceedingly ill-timed and in bad taste.  She was kindly-disposed, but
had not the faintest trace of that delicate perception of others'
feelings, and consideration for them, which constitutes the real
difference between Nature's ladies and such as are not ladies.

"Verily, to think that this holy Mother and our Mother Joan be sisters!"
cried she, "I remember somewhat of your history, my holy Sister: are you
not she that was sometime Countess of Arundel?"

Philippa saw how Isabel trembled from head to foot; but she knew not
what to say.  Joan La Despenser was equal to the emergency.

"Holy Mother," she said quietly, "would it please you, of your great
goodness, to permit me to remain here during the recreation-hour with my
sister?  I am assured we shall have much to say each to other, if we may
have your blessed allowance to speak freely after this manner."

"Be it so, Sister," said the Abbess, smiling genially; "I will see to
our sisters in the recreation-chamber."

A long conversation followed the departure of the Abbess.  Joan took up
the history where she had parted from Isabel, and told what had been her
own lot since then; and Isabel in her turn recounted her story--neither
a long nor an eventful one; for it told only how she had been taken to
Sempringham by the page, and had there settled herself, in the hermit's
cell which happened to be vacant.

When Philippa was lying awake that night, her thoughts were troublous
ones.  Not only did she very much doubt Sir Richard's consent to her
mother's visit to Kilquyt; but another question was puzzling her
exceedingly.  How far was it desirable to inform Isabel of the death of
Alianora?  She had noticed how the unfortunate remark of the Abbess had
agitated her mother; and she also observed that when Joan came to speak
to Isabel herself, she was totally silent concerning Earl Richard.  The
uncomplimentary adjectives which she had not spared in speaking to
Philippa were utterly discarded now.  Would it not do at least as much
harm as good to revive the old memories of pain by telling her this?
Philippa decided to remain silent.

The summer was passing away, and the autumn hues were slowly creeping
over the forest, when Sir Richard's answer arrived at Shaftesbury.  It
was not a pleasing missive; but it would have cost Philippa more tears
if it had made her less angry.  That gentleman had not written in a good
temper; but he was not without excuse, for he had suffered something
himself.  He had not dared to reply to Philippa's entreaty, without
seeking in his turn the permission of the Earl of Arundel, in whose
hands his fortune lay to make or mar.  And, by one of those
uncomfortable coincidences which have led to the proverb that
"Misfortunes never come single," it so happened that the news of the
Countess's death had reached the Earl on the very morning whereon Sir
Richard laid Philippa's letter before him.  The result was that there
broke on the devoted head of Sir Richard a tempest of ungovernable rage,
so extremely unpleasant in character that he might be excused for his
anxiety to avoid provoking a second edition of it.  The Earl was
grieved--so far as a nature like his could entertain grief--to lose his
second wife; but to find that the first wife had been discovered, and by
her daughter, possessed the additional character of insult.  That the
occurrence was accidental did not alter matters.  Words would not
content the aggrieved mourner: his hand sought the hilt of his sword,
and Sir Richard, thinking discretion the better part of valour, made his
way, as quickly as the laws of matter and space allowed him, out of the
terrible presence whereinto he had rashly ventured.  Feeling himself
wholly innocent of any provocation, it was not surprising that he should
proceed to dictate a letter to his wife, scarcely calculated to gratify
her feelings.  Thus ran the offending document:--

  "Dame,--Your epistle hath reached mine hands, [see Note 2] wherein it
  hath pleased you to give me to know of your finding of the Lady Isabel
  La Despenser, your fair mother, [see Note 3] and likewise of your
  desire that she should visit you at my Manor of Kilquyt.  Know
  therefore, that I can in no wise assent to the same.  For I am assured
  that it should provoke, and that in no small degree, the wrath of your
  fair father, my gracious Lord of Arundel: and I hereby charge you, on
  your obedience, so soon as you shall receive this my letter, that you
  return home, and tarry no longer at Shaftesbury nor Sempringham.  Know
  that I fare reasonably well, and Eustace my squire; and your fair
  father likewise, saving that he hath showed much anger towards you and
  me.  And thus, praying God and our blessed Lady, and Saint Peter and
  Saint Paul, to keep you.  I rest.

  "R.  Sergeaux."

The entire epistle was written by a scribe, for Sir Richard was as
innocent of the art of calligraphy as Philippa herself; and the
appending of his seal was the only part of the letter achieved by his
own hand.

Philippa read the note three times before she communicated its contents
to any one.  The first time, it was with feelings of bitter anger
towards both her father and her husband; the second, her view of her
father's conduct remained unchanged, but she began to see that Sir
Richard, from his own point of view, was not without reasonable excuse
for his refusal, and that considering the annoyance he had himself
suffered, his letter was moderate and even tolerably kind,--kind, that
is, for him.  After the third perusal, Philippa carried the letter to
Joan, and read it to her--not in Isabel's presence.

"What a fool wert thou, child," said Joan, with her usual bluntness, "to
send to thy lord concerning this matter!  Well, what is done, is done.
I had looked for no better had I known of it."

Philippa did not read the letter to her mother.  She merely told her the
substance; that Sir Richard would not permit her to receive her at
Kilquyt, and that he had ordered her home without delay.  Isabel's lip
quivered a moment, but the next instant she smiled.

"I am not surprised, my child," she said.  "Take heed, and obey."  It
was hard work to obey.  Hard, to part with Joan; harder yet, to leave
Isabel in her lonely cell at Sempringham, and to go forward on the as
lonely journey to Kilquyt.  Perhaps hardest of all was the last night in
the recreation-room at Sempringham.  Isabel and Philippa sat by
themselves in a corner, the hand of the eremitess clasped in that of her
daughter.

"But how do you account for all the sorrow that is in the world?"
Philippa had been saying.  "Take my life, for instance, or your own,
mother.  God could have given us very pleasant lives, if it had pleased
Him; why did He not do so?  How can it augur love, to take out of our
way all things loved or loving?"

"My daughter," answered Isabel, "I am assured--and the longer I live the
more assured I am--that the way which God marketh out for each one of
His chosen is the right way, the best way, and for that one the only
way.  Every pang given to us, if we be Christ's, is a pang that could
not be spared.  `As He was, so are we in this world;' and with us, as
with Him, `thus it _must_ be.'  All our Lord's followers wear His crown
of thorns; but theirs, under His loving hand, bud and flower; which His
never did, till He could cry upon the rood, `It is finished.'"

"But could not God," said Philippa, a little timidly, "have given us
more grace to avoid sinning, rather than have needed thus to burn our
sins out of us with hot irons?"

"Thou art soaring up into the seventh Heaven of God's purposes, my
child," answered Isabel with a smile; "I have no wings to follow thee so
far."

"Thou thinkest, then, mother," replied Philippa with a sigh, "that we
cannot understand the matter at all."

"We can understand only what is revealed to us," replied Isabel; "and
that, I grant, is but little; yet it is enough.  `As many as I love, I
rebuke and chasten.'  `What son is he whom the father chasteneth not?'
How could it be otherwise?  He were no wise father nor loving, who
should teach his son nothing, or should forbear to rebuke him for such
folly as might hereafter be his ruin."

Isabel was silent, and Philippa's memory went back to those old loveless
days at Arundel, when for her there had been no chastening, no rebuke,
only cold, lifeless apathy.  That was not love.  And she thought also of
her half-sister Alesia, whom she had visited once since her marriage,
and who brought up her children on the principle of no contradiction and
unlimited indulgence; and remembering how discontented and hard to
please this discipline had made them, she began to see that was not love
either.

"Thou hast wrought arras, my daughter," said Isabel again.  "Thou
knowest, therefore, that to turn the arras the backward way showeth not
the pattern.  The colours are all mixed out of proportion, as the
fastenings run in and out.  So our life is in this world.  The arras
shall only be turned the right way above, when the angels of God shall
see it, and marvel at the fair proportions and beauteous colours of that
which looked so rough and misshapen here below.

"Moreover, we are thus tried, methinks, not only for our own good.  We
are sent into this world to serve: to serve God first, and after to
serve man for God's sake.  And every blow of the chisel on the stone
doth but dress it for its place.  God's chisel never falleth on the
wrong place, and never giveth a stroke too much.  Every pang fitteth us
for more service; and I think thou shouldst find, in most instances,
that the higher and greater the service to which the varlet is called,
the deeper the previous suffering which fitteth him therefor.  And God's
greatnesses are not ours.  In His eyes, a poor serving-maiden may have a
loftier and more difficult task than a lord of the King's Council, or a
Marshal of the army.

"And after all, every sorrow and perplexity, be it large or small, doth
but give God's child an errand to his Father.  Nothing is too little to
bear to His ear, if it be not too little to distress and perplex His
servant.  To Him all things pertaining to this life are small--the cloth
of estate no less than the blade of grass; and all things pertaining to
that other and better life in His blessed Home, are great and mighty.
Yet we think the first great, and the last little.  And therefore things
become great that belong to the first life, just in proportion as they
bear upon the second.  Nothing is small that becomes to thee an occasion
of sin; nothing, that can be made an incentive to holiness."

"O mother, mother!" said Philippa, with a sudden sharp shoot of pain,
"to-morrow I shall be far away from you, and none will teach me any
more!"

"God will teach thee Himself, my child," said Isabel tenderly.  "He can
teach far better than I.  Only be thou not weary of His lessons; nor
refuse to learn them.  Maybe thou canst not see the use of many of them
till they are learned; but `thou shalt know hereafter.'  Thou shalt find
many a thorn in the way; but remember, it is not set there in anger, if
thou be Christ's; and many a flower shall spring up under thy feet, when
thou art not looking for it.  Only do thou never loose thine hold on
Him, who has promised never to loose His on thee.  Not that thou
shouldst be lost in so doing; He will have a care of that: but thou
mightest find thyself in the dark, and so far as thou couldst see,
alone.  It is sin that hides God from man; but nothing can hide man from
God."

And Philippa, drawing closer to her, whispered,--"Mother, pray for me."

A very loving smile broke over Isabel's lips, as she pressed them fondly
upon Philippa's cheek.

"Mine own Philippa," she said, in the softest accent of her soft voice,
"dost thou think I have waited thirty years for that?"

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1.  I am aware that this resolution will appear inconsistent with
Isabel's character; yet any other would have been inconsistent with her
times.  The vows of recluses were held very sacred; and the opinions of
the Boni-Homines on the monastic question were little in advance of
those of the Church of Rome.

Note 2.  Had Sir Richard been a peer, he would have said "_our_ hands."
This style, now exclusively royal, was in 1372 employed by all the
nobles.

Note 3.  This adjective also was peculiar to the peerage and the Royal
Family.  It was given to every relation except between husband and wife:
and the French _beau-pirt_ for _father-in-law_ is doubtless derived from
it.  Nay, it was conferred on the Deity; and "Fair Father Jesu Christ"
was by no means an uncommon title used in prayer.  In like manner, Saint
Louis, when he prayed, said, "_Sire Dieu_," the title of knighthood.
Quaint and almost profane as this usage sounds to modern ears, I think
their instinct was right: they addressed God in the highest and most
reverential terms they knew.



CHAPTER TEN.

FOUR YEARS LATER.

  "When the shore is won at last,
  Who will count the billows past?"

  Keble.

It was winter again; and the winds blew harshly and wailingly around the
Castle of Arundel.  In the stateliest chamber of that Castle, where the
hangings were of cramoisie paned with cloth of gold, the evening tapers
were burning low, and a black-robed priest knelt beside the bed where an
old man lay dying.

"I can think of nothing more, Father," faintly whispered the penitent.
"I have confessed every sin that I have ever sinned, so far as my memory
serveth: and many men have been worse sinners than I.  I never robbed a
church in all my wars.  I have bequeathed rents and lands to the Priory
of God and Saint Pancras at Lewes, for two monks to celebrate day by day
masses of our Lady and of the Holy Ghost,--two hundred pounds; and for
matins and requiem masses in my chapel here, a thousand marks; and four
hundred marks to purchase rent lands for the poor; and all my debts I
have had a care to pay.  Can I perform any other good work?  Will that
do, Father?"

"Thou canst do nought else, my son," answered the priest.  "Thou hast
right nobly purchased the favour of God, and thine own salvation.  Thy
soul shall pass, white and pure, through the flames of Purgatory, to be
triumphantly acquitted at the bar of God."

And lifting his hands in blessing, he pronounced the unholy
incantation,--"_Absolvo te_!"

"Thank the saints, and our dear Lady!" feebly responded the dying man.
"I am clean and sinless."

Before the morrow dawned on the Conversion of Saint Paul, that old man
knew, as he had never known on earth, whether he stood clean and sinless
before God or not.  There were no bands in that death.  The river did
not look dark to him; it did not feel cold as his feet touched it.  But
on the other side what angels met him? and what entrance was accorded,
to that sin-defiled and uncleansed soul, into that Land wherein there
shall in no wise enter anything that defileth?

And so Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, passed away.

Two months later,--by a scribe's letter, written in the name of her
half-brother, the young, brave, joyous man upon whose head the old
coronet had descended,--the news of the Earl's death reached Philippa
Sergeaux at Kilquyt.  Very differently it affected her from the manner
in which she would have received it four years before.  And very
differently from the manner in which it was received by the daughters of
Alianora, to whom (though they did not put it into audible words) the
real thought of the heart was--"Is the old man really gone at last?
Well, it was time he should.  Now I shall receive the coronet he left to
me, and the two, or three, thousand marks."  For thus he had remembered
Joan and Alesia; and thus they remembered him.  To Mary he left nothing;
a sure sign of offence, but how incurred history remains silent.  But to
the eldest daughter, whose name was equally unnamed with hers--whose
ears heard the news so far away--whose head had never known the fall of
his hand in blessing--whose cheek had never been touched by loving lips
of his--to Philippa Sergeaux the black serge for which she exchanged her
damask robes was real mourning.

She did not say now, "I can never forgive my father."  It is not when we
are lying low in the dust before the feet of the Great King, oppressed
with the intolerable burden of our ten thousand talents, that we feel
disposed to rise and take our fellow-servant by the throat, with the
pitiless, "Pay me that thou owest."  The offensive "Stand by,--I am
holier than thou!" falls only from unholy lips.  When the woman that was
a sinner went out, washed and forgiven, from that sinless Presence, with
the shards of the broken alabaster box in her hand, she was less likely
than at any previous time in her life to reproach the fellow-sinners
whom she met on her journey home.  So, when Philippa Sergeaux's eyes
were opened, and she came to see how much God had forgiven her, the
little that she had to forgive her father seemed less than nothing in
comparison.  She could distinguish now, as previously she could not--but
as God does always--between the sin and the sinner; she was able to keep
her hatred and loathing for the first, and to regard the second with the
deepest pity.  And when she thought of the sleep into which she could
have little doubt that his soul had been lulled,--of the black awakening
"on the brink of the pit,"--there was no room in her heart for any
feeling but that of unutterable anguish.

They had not sent for her to Arundel.  Until she heard that the end was
reached, she never knew he was near the end at all.

It is not Christianity, but Pharisaism, which would shut up the kingdom
of heaven against all but itself.  To those who have tasted that the
Lord is gracious, it is something more than mere privilege to summon him
that is athirst to come.  "Necessity is upon them--yea, woe is unto them
if they preach not the gospel!"  Though no Christian is a priest, every
Christian must be a preacher.  Ay, and that whether he will or not.  He
may impose silence upon his lips, but his life must be eloquent in spite
of himself.  And what a terrible thought is this, when we look on our
poor, unworthy, miserable lives rendered unto the Lord, for all His
benefits toward us!  When the world sees us vacillating between right
and wrong--questioning how near we may go to the edge of the precipice
and yet be safe--can it realise that we believe that right and wrong to
be a matter of life and death?  Or when it hears us murmuring
continually over trifling vexations, can it believe that we honestly
think ourselves those to whom it is promised that all shall work for
good--that all things are ours--that we are heirs of God, and
joint-heirs with Christ?

O Lord, pardon the iniquities of our holy things!  Verily, without Thee
we can do nothing.

On the morning that this news reached Kilquyt, an old man in the garb of
the Dominican Order was slowly mounting the ascent which led from the
Vale of Sempringham.  The valley was just waking into spring life.  In
the trees above his head the thrushes and chaffinches were singing; and
just before him, diminished to a mere speck in the boundless blue, a
lark poured forth his "flood of delirious music."  The Dominican paused
and rested on his staff while he listened.

"Sing, happy birds!" he said, when at length the lark's song was over,
and the bird had come down to earth again.  "For you there are no vain
regrets over yesterday, no woeful anticipations of to-morrow.  But what
kind of song can _she_ sing when she hath heard the news I bring her?"

"Father Guy!" said a voice beside him.

It was a child of ten years old who stood in his path--a copy of Elaine
four years before.

"Ah, maid, art thou there?" answered Guy.  "Run on, Annora, and say to
the Grey Lady that I will be at her cell in less than an hour.  Thy feet
are swifter than mine."

Annora ran blithely forward.  Guy of Ashridge pursued his weary road,
for he was manifestly very weary.  At length he rather suddenly halted,
and sat down on a bank where primroses grew by the way-side.

"I can go no further without resting," said he.  "Ten is one thing, and
threescore and ten is another.  If I could turn back and go no
further!--Is the child here again already?"

"Father Guy," said Annora, running up and throwing herself down on the
primrose bank, "I have been to the cell, but I have not given your
message."

"Is the Lady not there?" asked Guy, a sudden feeling of relief coming
over him.

"Oh yes, she is there," replied the child; "but she was kneeling at
prayer, and I thought you would not have me disturb her."

"Right," answered the monk.  "But lest she should leave the cell ere I
reach it, go back, Annora, and keep watch.  Tell her, if she come forth,
that I must speak with her to-day."

Once more away fled the light-footed Annora, and Guy, rising, resumed
his journey.

"If it must be, it may as well be now," he said to himself, with a sigh.

So, plodding and resting by turns, he at length arrived at the door of
the cell.  The door was closed, and the child sat on the step before it,
singing softly to herself, and playing with a lapful of wild flowers--
just as her sister had been doing when Philippa Sergeaux first made her
acquaintance.

"Is she come forth yet?" asked Guy.

Annora shook her flaxen curls.  Guy went to the little window, and
glanced within.  The grey figure was plainly visible, kneeling in
prayer, with the head bent low, and resting against a ledge of the rock
which formed the walls of the little dwelling.  The monk sat down on a
piece of rock outside the cell, and soon so completely lost himself in
thought that Annora grew weary of her amusement before he spoke again.
She did not, however, leave him; but when she had thrown away her
flowers, and had spent some minutes in a vain search for a four-leaved
clover, fairly tired out, she came and stood before him.

"The shadow is nearly straight, Father Guy.  Will she be much longer, do
you think?"

Guy started suddenly when Annora spoke.

"There is something amiss," he replied, in a tone of apprehension.  "I
never knew her so long before.  Has she heard my news already?"

He looked in again.  The grey veiled figure had not changed its
position.  After a moment's irresolution, Guy laid his hand upon the
latch.  The monk and the child entered together,--Guy with a face of
resolute endurance, as though something which would cost him much pain
must nevertheless be done; Annora with one of innocent wonder, not
unmixed with awe.

Guy took one step forward, and stopped suddenly.

"O Father Guy!" said Annora in a whisper, "the Grey Lady is not
praying,--she is asleep."

"Yes, she is asleep," replied Guy in a constrained voice.  "`So He
giveth His beloved sleep.'  He knew how terribly the news would pain
her; and He would let none tell it to her but Himself.  `I thank Thee, O
Father, Lord of Heaven and earth!'"

"But how strangely she sleeps!" cried Annora, still under her breath.
"How white she is! and she looks so cold!  Father Guy, won't you awake
her?  She is not having nice dreams, I am afraid."

"The angels must awake her," said Guy, solemnly.  "Sweeter dreams than
hers could no man have; for far above, in the Holy Land, she seeth the
King's face.  Child, this is not sleep--it is death."

Ay, in the attitude of prayer, her head pillowed in its last sleep on
that ledge of the rock, knelt all that was mortal of Isabel La
Despenser.  With her had been no priest to absolve--save the High
Priest; no hand had smoothed her pathway to the grave but the Lord's own
hand, who had carried her so tenderly through the valley of the shadow
of death.  Painlessly the dark river was forded, silently the
pearl-gates were thrown open; and now she stood within the veil, in the
innermost sanctuary of the Temple of God.  The arras of her life,
wrought with such hard labour and bitter tears, was complete now.  All
the strange chequerings of the pattern were made plain, the fair
proportions no longer hidden: the perfected work shone out in its
finished beauty, and she grudged neither the labour nor the tears now.

Guy of Ashridge could see this; but to Annora it was incomprehensible.
She had been told by her mother that the Grey Lady had passed a life of
much suffering before she came to Sempringham; for silent as she was
concerning the details of that life, Isabel had never tried to conceal
the fact that it had been one of suffering.  And the child's childish
idea was the old notion of poetical justice--of the good being rewarded,
and the evil punished, openly and unmistakably, in this world; a state
of affairs frequently to be found in novels, but only now and then in
reality.  Had some splendid litter been borne to the door of the little
cell, and had noblemen decked in velvet robes, shining with jewels, and
riding on richly caparisoned horses, told her that they were come to
make the Grey Lady a queen, Annora would have been fully satisfied.  But
here the heavenly chariot was invisible, and had come noiselessly; the
white and glistering raiment of the angels had shone with no perceptible
lustre, had swept by with no audible sound.  The child wept bitterly.

"What troubleth thee, Annora?" said Guy of Ashridge, laying his hand
gently upon her head.

"Oh!" sobbed Annora, "God hath given her nothing after all!"

"Hath He given her nothing?" responded Guy.  "I would thou couldst ask
her, and see what she would answer."

"But I thought," said the child, vainly endeavouring to stop crying, "I
thought He had such beautiful things to give to people He loved.  She
used to say so.  But He gave her nothing beautiful--only this cell and
those grey garments.  I thought He would have clad her in golden
baudekyn [see Note 1], and set gems in her hair, and given her a horse
to ride,--like the Lady de Chartreux had when she came to the Convent
last year to visit her daughter, Sister Egidia.  Her fingers were all
sparkling with rings, and her gown had beautiful strings of pearl down
the front, with perry-work [see Note 2] at the wrists.  Why did not God
give the Grey Lady such fair things as these?  Was she not quite as good
as the Lady de Chartreux?"

"Because He loved her too well," said Guy softly.  "He had better and
fairer things than such poor gauds for her.  The Lady de Chartreux must
die one day, and leave all her pearls and perry-work behind her.  But to
the Lady Isabel that here lieth dead, He gave length of days for ever
and ever; He gave her to drink of the Living Water, after which she
never thirsted any more."

"Oh, but I wish He would have given her something that I could see!"
sobbed Annora again.

"Little maid," said Guy, his hand again falling lightly on the little
flaxen head, "God grant that when thy few and evil days of this lower
life be over, thou mayest both see and share what He hath given her!"

And slowly he turned back to "her who lay so silent."

"Farewell, Isabel, Countess of Arundel!" he said almost tenderly.  "For
the corruptible coronet whereof man deprived thee, God hath given thee
an incorruptible crown.  For the golden baudekyn that was too mean to to
clothe thee,--the robes that are washed white, the pure bright stone
[see Note 3] whereof the angels' robes are fashioned.  For the stately
barbs which were not worthy to bear thee,--a chariot and horses of fire.
And for the delicate cates of royal tables, which were not sweet enough
for thee,--the Bread of Life, which whosoever eateth shall never hunger,
the Water of Life, which whosoever drinketh shall never thirst.

  "`_O retributio! stat brevis actio, vita perennis;
  O retributio! caelica mansio stat lue plenis._'"

  See Note 4 for a translation.

"How blessed an exchange, how grand a reward!  I trust God, but thou
seest Him.  I believe He hath done well, with thee, as with me, but thou
knowest it."

  "`Jamais soyf n'auras
  A l'eternite!'"

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1.  Baudekyn, the richest variety of this rich silk, in which
threads of gold were probably intermingled.

Note 2.  Perry-work: goldsmiths' work, often set with precious stones.

Note 3.  In Revelations xv. 6, the most ancient MSS., instead of "pure
and white linen," read "a pure bright stone."

Note 4:

  "`O happy retribution!
  Short toil, eternal rest;
  For mortals and for sinners
  A mansion with the blest!'"

  Neals's _Translation_.



APPENDIX.

Some readers of this tale may desire to know on what historical
foundation it rests, and in what points the fiction departs from truth.

The Order of Predicant Friars was instituted by Dominic in 1215, with
the avowed object of maintaining Roman doctrine and supremacy, and of
opposing and superseding the wandering preachers sent out by the
Waldensian Church into all parts of Europe, and known chiefly as
_Boni-Homines_, or _Poor Men of Lyons_.  But the Waldensian Church was
acute enough to take advantage of this movement; and no sooner had the
Order been founded than an army of "Gospellers" (as even thus early they
were called), issued forth under its shelter.  It appears probable that
at an early period of their preaching, a very large percentage of the
Predicant Friars were Gospellers.  It is, moreover, an historical fact,
that during the struggle between Edward the Second and his wretched
Queen, the Predicant Friars ranged themselves on the side of the King,
who had always been their friend, and whose own confessor, Luke de
Wodeford, was of their Order.  (_Rot. Ex., Pasc_, 2 Ed. III.)  That the
Despensers also patronised them is rather an inference founded upon
fact, yet on such facts as very decidedly point to this conclusion.  It
should not be forgotten, that all accounts of the reign and character of
Edward the Second which have come down to us were written by monks, or
by persons educated in the opinions of the monks; and the Church of Rome
has never, at any period of her history, hesitated to accuse of the
vilest crimes any who endeavoured to escape from her toils into the pure
light of the Gospel of Christ.

That Hugh Le Despenser the Elder was an unprincipled and avaricious man,
there can be little question.  With him, if he embraced the principles
of the _Boni-Homines_ at all, it was evidently a mere matter of
intellectual opinion.  Much less evidence can be found against his son,
whose chief crime seems to have been that he aroused the hatred of the
"she-wolf of France."  Joan La Despenser (the ladies of the family are
always distinguished as _La_ Despenser in contemporary records) lived to
a good age, for she was probably born about 1310, and she died in her
nunnery of Shaftesbury, November 8, 1384 (I.P.M. 8 Ric. II., 14).

Richard Earl of Arundel, surnamed _Copped-Hat_, the elder of the two
sons of Earl Edmund and Alesia, heiress of Surrey, was born about 1308,
and died January 24, 1376.  (Arundel MS. 51, fol. 18.)  His father was
beheaded with Hugh Le Despenser the Elder, October 8 or 27, 1326; his
mother died before May 23, 1338.  (Froissart's Chronicles, Book I.,
chapter xi.; _Rot. Pat_. 12 Ed. III., Part 2.)  His first marriage was
before February 2, 1321 (_Ib_. 14 Ed. II., Pt. 2); and his baby Countess
was probably not more than three years old at that time.  Her divorce
immediately preceded the second marriage, and it was apparently just
before June 24, 1345.  On that day, "Isabel La Despenser, and Alianora
daughter of Henry Earl of Lancaster," are returned among the tenants of
Richard Earl of Arundel (_Ib_., 19 Ed. III., Pt. 1): the designation
showing that on that day neither was Countess of Arundel, but that the
marriage-settlements of Alianora were already executed.  After this date
all trace of Isabel disappears, until we meet with the name of "Dame
Isabel, daughter of Sir Hugh Spencer," among the persons buried in the


Chapter House of Westminster Abbey.  (Harl. MS. 544, fol. 78.)  The
Countess Alianora, at the time of her marriage, was the widow of John
Lord Beaumont, and the mother of two infant children; she had only just
returned from a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint James of Compostella.
(_Rot. Pat_. 18 Ed. III., Pt 1.)  She died January 11, 1372 and was
buried at Lewes.  (Reg. Lewes, fol. 108.)  Her second family consisted
of three sons and three daughters--Richard, John, Thomas, Joan, Alesia,
and Alianora.  The last-named died in childhood; all the rest survived
their parents.--Richard, a well-meaning and brave, but passionate and
narrow-minded man, was governed by his stronger-minded brother Thomas,
and under his evil influence entered upon a treasonable conspiracy, for
which he paid the penalty on Tower Hill in the spring of 1397.--John is
chiefly remarkable for having married the heiress of Maltravers, and
becoming eventually the root of the family.--Thomas became Bishop of Ely
and Archbishop of Canterbury--the persecuting Archbishop Arundel who
will perhaps be remembered by the readers of "Mistress Margery"--and
after suffering for his treasonable practices a richly-deserved
banishment, was at once recalled and restored by his friend and
fellow-conspirator, Henry the Fourth.  He died in 1413.  That the House
of Arundel had no "Gospel" sympathies is shown by more evidences than
one; though the Archbishop himself had at one time pretended friendship
towards the Lollards.  It did not last long; he would scarcely have been
a true Arundel had it done so.--Joan Fitzalan was a woman of intense
energy and terrible passions.  She did not live happily with her
husband, Humphrey Earl of Hereford, as appears from a curious and unique
entry on the Patent Rolls (33 Ed. III., Pt. 3), providing that Humphrey
should not divorce Joan on any pretence of precontract.  The Earl,
however, died at the early age of thirty-one, and Joan, whose two
daughters were married to Princes (Alianora to Thomas Duke of
Gloucester, Mary to Henry the Fourth), became a very powerful and
wealthy widow.  One anecdote will show what her character was better
than volumes of description.  She presided in person at the execution of
John Duke of Exeter (brother of her sister Alesia's husband), he being
loyal to his half-brother, King Richard, while Joan was a vehement
partisan of her son-in-law, Henry the Fourth.  When no one came forward,
in answer to her appeal, as the Duke's executioner, Joan exclaimed,
"Cursed be you villains! are none of you bold enough to kill a man?"  A
squire volunteered to officiate, but when he had seen and heard the man
whom he was to slay, he shrank from the terrible task.  "Madam," was his
remonstrance to the Countess, "for all the gold in the world, I cannot
kill such a Lord!"  "Thou shalt do what thou hast promised," said Joan,
"or I will cut thy head off."  And, probably knowing that she was likely
to "do what she had promised," the squire preferred the fall of the
Duke's head to his own.  (_Lystoire de la Traison et Mort du Roy
Richart_, pp. 98-9.)  This strong-minded woman died April 7, 1419, and
was buried at Walden, having previously been admitted a sister of the
Grey Friars in her brother's Cathedral of Canterbury.  (I.P.M. 7 H.V.,
59:--Arundel MS. 51, fol. 18:--_ib_. 68, fol. 51, b.)  Of Alesia,
Countess of Kent, little personal is known.  She left no mark on her
time, though the members of her numerous family were very prominent
characters.  She died March 17, 1416 (I.P.M. 4 H.V., 51).

By all genealogists who have hitherto written on the Arundel family, two
more daughters are ascribed to Earl Richard the Copped-Hat.  These are
Philippa Sergeaux, the heroine of the tale; and Mary L'Estrange.  At the
time when this story was written, I was misled to follow this
supposition, though I had already seen that in that case, Isabel, and
not Alianora, must have been the mother of Philippa.  Some months after
the story was first published, I began to suspect that this was also the
case with regard to Mary L'Estrange.  But I was not prepared for the
discovery, made only last May, that Philippa Sergeaux was not the
daughter of Earl Richard at all!  In two charters recorded on a Close
Roll for 20 Ric. II., she distinctly styles herself "daughter of Sir
Edmund of Arundel, Knight," This was a younger brother of Earl Richard;
and his wife was Sybil Montacute, a daughter of the Lollard House of
Salisbury.  It is probable, though no certainty has yet been found, that
Mary L'Estrange was also a daughter of Sir Edmund, since dates
conclusively show that she cannot have been the daughter of Alianora of
Lancaster.  She died August 29, 1396, leaving an only child, Ankaretta
Talbot.  (I.P.M. 20 R. II., 48).

As early, therefore, as I have the opportunity of doing it, I make the
_amende honorable_ to my readers for having unwittingly misled them on
this point.  It is scarcely a discredit not to have known a fact which
was known to none.  The tale must therefore be regarded as pure fiction,
so far as Philippa is concerned; for Isabel La Despenser apparently had
no child.  The facts remain the same as regards other persons, where
their history is not affected by the discovery.

Philippa Sergeaux is represented in the opening of the story as a child
of three years old.  It is more than probable that she was about ten
years younger.  The date of her marriage is not on record.  She was
eventually the mother of five children, though all were born subsequent
to the period at which my story closes.  They were--Richard, born
December 21, 1376, and died issueless, June 24, 1396; Elizabeth, born
1379, wife of Sir William Marny; Philippa, born 1381, wife of Robert
Passele; Alice, born at Kilquyt, September 1, 1384, wife of Guy de Saint
Albino; Joan, born 1393, died February 21, 1400.  Philippa became a
widow, September 30, 1393, and died September 13, 1399.  (I.P.M., 17
Ric. II., 53; 21 Ric. II., 50; 1 H. IV., 14, 23, 24.)

Some of the Christian names may strike the reader as having a very
modern sound.  I may therefore note that not one name occurs in the
story which is not authenticated by its appearance in the state papers
of the time.

It only remains to be added, that the fictitious characters of the tale
are Giles de Edingdon and Guy of Ashridge, the nurse Alina, Agnes the
lavender, the nuns Laura and Senicula, and the woodcutter's children
Elaine and Annora.  The details given of Earl Richard's will are true;
but the presence of the Earl and Sir Richard Sergeaux in the train of
John of Gaunt in Guienne, has been assumed for the purposes of the
story.






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