Earl Hubert's Daughter Part 45

"Wise!"

"Pardon me--is it right?"

"Right!--what is the wrong? She is my wife, in G.o.d's sight--she and none other. What do I care for Pope or King? Is not G.o.d above both?

We plighted our vows to Him, and none but He could part us."

"Let me break it to her, then," said Beatrice, feeling scarcely so much convinced as overwhelmed. "It will startle her if she be not told beforehand."

Richard's only answer was to release Beatrice from his grasp. She pa.s.sed into Margaret's bower, and, was surprised to see a strange gleam in the eyes of the dying girl.

"Beatrice, Richard is here. I know I heard his voice. Bring him to me."

"G.o.d has told her," said Bruno, in an undertone, as he left the room, with a sign to Beatrice and Doucebelle to follow.

They stood in the ante-chamber, minute after minute, but no sound came through the closed door. Half an hour pa.s.sed in total silence. At last Bruno said--

"I think some one should go in."

But no one liked to do it, and the silence went on again.

Then Hawise same in, and wanted to know what they were all doing there.

She was excessively shocked when Doucebelle told her. How extremely improper! She must go in and put a stop to it that minute.

Hawise tapped at the door, but no answer came. She opened it, and stood, silenced and frightened by what she saw. Richard de Clare bent over the bed, pouring pa.s.sionate, unanswered kisses upon dead violet eyes, and tenderly smoothing the tresses of the cedar hair.

"The Lord has been here!" said Beatrice involuntarily.

"O Lord, be thanked that Thou hast given Thy child quiet rest at last!"

was the response from Bruno.

Richard stood up and faced them.

"Is this G.o.d's doing, or is it man's?" he said, in a voice which sounded almost like an execration of some one. "G.o.d gave me this white dove, to nestle in my bosom and to be the glory of my life. Who took her from me? Does one of you dare to say it was G.o.d? It was man!--a man who shall pay for it, if he coin his heart's blood to do so. And if the payment cost my heart's blood, it will be little matter, seeing it has cost my heart already."

He drew his dagger, and bending down again, severed one of the long soft tresses of the cedar hair.

"Farewell, my dove!" he murmured, in a tone so altered that it was difficult to recognise the same voice. "Thou at least shalt suffer no more. Thy place is with the blessed saints and the holy angels, where nothing may ever enter that shall grieve or defile. But surely as thou art safe housed in Heaven, and I am left desolate on earth, thy death shall be avenged by fair means or by foul!"

"'Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, saith the Lord,'" softly quoted Bruno as Richard pa.s.sed him in the doorway.

"He will,--by my hands!"

And Richard de Clare was seen no more.

It was hard to tell the poor mother, who came into her Margaret's bower with a bright smile, guessing so little of the terrible news in store.

Tenderly as they tried to break it, she fainted away, and had to be nursed back to life and diligently cared for. But all was over for the night, and Doucebelle and Beatrice were beginning to think of bed, before Eva made her appearance. Of course the news had to be told again.

"Oh dear, how shocking!" said Eva, putting down her bouquet. "How very distressing! (I am afraid those flowers will never keep till morning.) Well, do you know, I am really thankful I was not here. What good could it have done poor dear Margaret, you know?--and I am so easily upset, and so very sensitive! I never can _bear_ scenes of that sort. (Dear, I had no idea my shoes were so splashed!) As it is, I shall not sleep a wink. I sha'n't get over it for a week,--if I do then! Oh, how very shocking! Look, Doucebelle, aren't these cowslips sweet?"

"Eva, wilt thou let me have some of the white flowers--for Margaret?"

said Doucebelle.

"For Margaret!--why, what dost thou mean? Oh! To put by her in her coffin? Horrid! Really, Dulcie, I think that is great waste. And the bouquet is so nicely made up,--it would be such a pity to pull it to pieces! I spent half an hour at least in putting it together, and Brimnatyn de Hertiland helped me. Of course thou canst have them if thou must,--but--"

Doucebelle quietly declined the gift so doubtfully offered.

"I wish, Doucebelle, thou wouldst have more consideration for people's feelings!" said Eva in a querulous tone, smoothing the petals of her flowers. "I am sure, whenever I look at a bouquet for the next twelvemonth, I shall think of this. I cannot help it--things do take such hold of me! And just think, how easily all that might be avoided!"

"I beg thy pardon, Eva. I am sorry I asked thee," was the soft answer.

It was not far to Margaret's grave, for they laid her in the quiet cloisters of Westminster Abbey, and the King who had been an accessory to her end followed her bier. Hers was not the only life that his act had shortened. Earl Hubert had virtually done with earth, when he saw lowered into the cold ground the coffin of his Benjamin. He survived her just two years, and laid down his weary burden of life on the fourth of May, 1243.

When Margaret was gone, there was no further tie to Bury Castle for Bruno and his daughter. Bishop Grosteste was again applied to, and responded as kindly as before, though circ.u.mstances did not allow him to do it equally to his satisfaction. The rich living originally offered to Bruno had of course been filled up, and there was nothing at that moment in the episcopal gift but some very small ones. The best of these he gave; and about two months after the death of Margaret, Bruno and Beatrice took leave of the Countess, and removed to their new home.

It was a quiet little hamlet in the south of Lincolnshire, with a population of barely three hundred souls; and Beatrice's time was filled up by different duties from those which had occupied her at Bury Castle.

The summer glided away in a peaceful round of most unexciting events.

There had been so much excitement hitherto in their respective lives, that the priest and his daughter were only too thankful for a calm stretch of life, all to themselves.

One evening towards the close of summer, as Bruno came home to his little parsonage, where the dog-roses looked in at the windows, and the honeysuckles climbed round the porch, a sight met him which a.s.sured him that his period of peace and content was ended. On the stone bench in the porch, alone, intently examining a honeysuckle, sat Sir John de Averenches.

Bruno de Malpas was much too shrewd to suppose that his society was the magnet which had attracted the silent youth some fifty miles across the country. He sighed, but resigning himself to the inevitable, lifted his biretta as he came up to the door. Sir John rose and greeted him with evident cordiality, but he did not appear to have any thing particular to say beyond two self-evident statements--that it was a fine evening, and the honeysuckles were pretty.

"Is Beatrice within?" said the priest, feeling pretty sure that he knew.

Sir John demurely thought not. It was another half-hour before Beatrice made her appearance; and Bruno noticed that the unexpected presence of a third person evoked no expression of surprise on her part. The preparations for supper were made by Beatrice and her attendant handmaiden Sabina; and after the meal was over, Bruno discreetly went off, with the interesting observation that he was about to visit a sick person at the furthest part of the parish. Sir John had taken his seat on the extreme end of a form, and Beatrice came and sat with her embroidery at the other end. Ten minutes of profound silence intervened.

"Beatrice!"

"Yes."

Another minute of silence.

"Beatrice!"

"Well?"

"Beatrice, what dost thou think of me?"

Beatrice coolly cut off an end of yellow silk, and threaded her needle with blue.

"Ask my father."

"How does he know what thou thinkest?"

"Well, he always does," said Beatrice, calmly fastening the blue silk on the wrong side of the material.

"Wilt thou not tell me thyself?"

"I should, if I wanted to be rid of thee."