Joyce Morrell's Harvest Part 16

"Wert so poor an innocent as to crede that, _Milly_?" saith she. "He is a year elder than thy father. But I grant, he looks by far younger than he is. And I reckon he 'bated ten years or so of what he looked. He alway looked young," she saith, the softened tone coming back into her voice. "Men with fair hair like his, mostly do, until all at once they break into aged men. And he hath kept him well, with washes and unguents."

It was strange to hear how the softness and the bitterness strave together in her voice. I count it were by reason they so strave in her heart.

"Wait till to-morrow, _Milly_," saith Aunt _Joyce_, arising. "Thou shalt hear then of my weary walk through the thorns, and judge for thyself if I had done well to leave thee to the like."

_Milly_ sobbed again, but methought something more softly.

"We were to have been wed o' _Sunday_ even," saith she, "by a _Popish_ priest, right as good as in church,--and then to have come home and won _Father_ and _Mother_ to forgive us and bless us. Then all had been smooth and sweet, and we should have lived happy ever after."

Oh, but what pitifulness was there in Aunt _Joyce's_ smile!

"Should you?" saith she, in a tone which seemed to me like the biggest nay ever printed in a book. "Poor innocent child! A _Popish_ priest cannot lawfully wed any, and evening is out of the canonical hours.

Wist thou not that such marriage should ne'er have held good in law?"

"It might have been good in G.o.d's sight, trow," saith she, something perversely.

"Nay!" saith Aunt _Joyce_. "When men go to, of set purpose, to break the laws of their country,--without it be in obedience to His plain command,--I see not how the Lord shall hold them guiltless. So he promised to bring thee home to ask pardon, did he? Poor, trusting, deluded child! Thou shouldst never have come home, _Milly_--unless it had been a year or twain hence, a forlorn, heart-broken, wretched thing.

Well, we could have forgiven thee and comforted thee then--as we will now."

I am right weary a-writing, and will stay mine hand till I set down _Aunt's_ story to-morrow.

SELWICK HALL, DECEMBER YE SECOND.

I marvel when I can make an end of writing, or when matters shall have done happening. For early this morrow, ere breakfast were well over, come a quick rap of the door, which _Caitlin_ opened, and in come _Alice Lewthwaite_. Not a bit like herself looked she, with a scarf but just cast o'er her head, and all out of breath, as though she had come forth all suddenly, and had run fast and far. We had made most of us an end of eating, but were yet sat at the table.

"_Alice_, dear heart, what aileth thee?" saith _Mother_, and rose up.

"Lady _Lettice_, do pray you tell me," panteth she, "if you have seen or heard aught of our _Blanche_?"

"Nay, _Alice_, in no wise," saith _Mother_.

"Lack the day!" quoth she, "then our fears be true."

"What fears, dear heart?" I think _Father_, and _Mother_, and Aunt _Joyce_, asked at her all together.

"I would as lief say nought, saving to my Lady, and Mistress _Joyce_,"

she saith: so they bare her away, and what happed at that time I cannot say, saving that _Father_ himself took _Alice_ home, and did seem greatly concerned at her trouble. Well, this was scantly o'er ere a messenger come with a letter to _Mother_, whereon she had no sooner cast her eyes than she brake forth with a cry of pleasure. Then, _Father_ desiring to know what it were, she told us all that certain right dear and old friends of hers, the which she had not seen of many years, were but now at the _Salutation_ Inn at _Ambleside_, and would fain come on and tarry a season here if it should suit with _Mother's_ conveniency to have them.

"And right fain should I be," saith she; and so said _Father_ likewise.

Then _Mother_ told us who were these her old friends: to wit, Sir _Robert Stafford_ and his lady, which was of old time one Mistress _Dulcibel Fenton_, of far kin unto my Lady _Norris_, that was _Mother's_ mistress of old days at _Minster Lovel_: and moreover, one Mistress _Martin_, a widow that is sister unto Sir _Robert_, and was _Mother's_ fellow when she served my dear-worthy Lady of _Surrey_. So _Father_ saith he would ride o'er himself to _Ambleside_, and give them better welcome than to send but a letter back: and _Mother_ did desire her most loving commendations unto them all, and bade us all be hasteful and help to make ready the guest-chambers. So right busy were we all the morrow, and no time for no tales of no sort: but in the afternoon, when all was done, Aunt _Joyce_ had us three up into her chamber, and bade us sit and listen.

"For it is a sorrowful story I have to tell," saith she: and added, as though she spake to herself,--"ay, and it were best got o'er ere _Dulcie_ cometh."

So we sat all in the window-seat, _Milly_ in the midst, and Aunt _Joyce_ afore us in a great cushioned chair.

"When I was of your years, _Milly_," saith she, "I dwelt--where I now do at _Minster Lovel_, with my father and my sister _Anstace_. Our mother was dead, and our baby brother _Walter_; and of us there had never been more. But we had two cousins--one _Aubrey Louvaine_, the son of our mother's sister,--you wot who he is," she saith, and smiled: "and the other, the son of our father's sister dwelt at _Oxford_ with his mother, a widow, and his name was--_Leonard Norris_."

The name was so long a-coming that I marvelled if she meant to tell us.

"I do not desire to make my tale longer than need is, dear hearts,"

pursueth she, "and therefore I will but tell you that in course of time, with a.s.sent of my father and his mother, my cousin _Leonard_ and I were troth-plight. I loved him, methinks, as well as it was in woman to love man: and--I thought he loved me. I never knew a man who had such a tongue to cajole a woman's heart. He could talk in such a fashion that thou shouldst feel perfectly a.s.sured that he loved thee with all his heart, and none but thee: and ere the sun had set, he should have given the very same certainty to _Nan_ at the farm, and to _Mall_ down in the glen. I believe he did rarely make love to so little as one woman at once. He liked--he once told your father so much--a choice of strings for his bow. But of all this, at first, lost in my happy love, I knew nothing. My love to him was so true and perfect, that the very notion that his could be lesser than so never entered mine head. It was _Anstace_ who saw the clouds gathering before any other--_Anstace_, to whom, in her helpless suffering, G.o.d gave a strange power of reading hearts. There came a strange maiden on the scene--a beautiful maiden, with fair eyes and gleaming hair--and _Leonard's_ heart was gone from me for ever. Gone!--had it ever come? I cannot tell. May-be some little corner of his heart was mine, once on a time--I doubt if I had more. He had every corner and every throb of mine. Howbeit, when this maid--"

"How was she called, Aunt _Joyce_?" saith _Milly_, in rather an hard voice.

Aunt _Joyce_ did not make answer for a moment: and, looking up on her, I saw drawn brows and flushed cheeks.

"Never mind that, _Milly_. I shall call her _Mary_. It was not her name. Well, when this maid first came to visit us, and I brought her above to my sister, that as ye know might never arise from the couch whereon she lay--I something marvelled to see how quick from her face to mine went _Anstace'_ eyes, and back again to her. I knew, long after, what had been her thought. She had no faith in _Leonard_, and she guessed quick enough that this face should draw him away from me. She tried to prepare me as she saw it coming. But I was blind and deaf. I shut mine eyes tight, and put my fingers in mine ears. I would not face the cruel truth. For _Mary_ herself, I am well a.s.sured she meant me no ill, nor did she see that any ill was wrought till all were o'er. She did but divert her with _Leonard's_ words, caring less for him than for them. She was vain, and loved flatteries, and he saw it, and gave her them by the bushel. She was a child laking with a firebrand, and never knew what it were until she burnt her fingers. And at last, maids, mine eyes were forced open. _Leonard_ himself told me, and in so many words, what I had refused to hear from others,--that he loved well enough the gold that was like to be mine, but he did not love me. There were bitter words on both sides, but mine were bitterest. And so, at last, we parted. I could show you the flag on which he stood when I saw his face for the last time--the last, until I saw it yester-morrow. Others had seen him, and knew him not, through the changes of years. Even your father did not know him, though they had been bred up well-nigh as brothers. But mine eyes were sharper. I had not borne that face in mine heart, and seen it in my dreams, for all these years, that I should look on him and not know it. I knew the look in his eyes, the poise of his head, the smile on his lips, too well--too well! I reckon that between that day and this, a thousand women may have had that smile upon them. But I thought of the day when I had it--when it was the one light of life to me--for I had not then beheld the Light of the World.

_Milly_, didst thou think me cruel yester-morrow?--cold, and hard, and stern? Ah, men do think a woman so,--and women at times likewise--think her words hard, when she has to crush her heart down ere she can speak any word at all--think her eyes icy cold, when behind them are a storm of pa.s.sionate tears that must not be shed then, and she has to keep the key hard turned lest they burst the door open. Ah, young maids, you look upon me as who should say, that I am an old woman from whom such words are strange to you. They be fit only for a young la.s.s's lips, forsooth? Childre, you wis not yet that the hot love of youth is nought to be compared to the yearning love of age,--that the maid that loveth a man whom she first met a month since cannot bear the rushlight unto her that has shrined him in her heart for thirty years."

Aunt _Joyce_ tarried a moment, and drew a long breath. Then she saith in a voice that was calmer and lower--

"_Anstace_ told me I loved not the _Leonard_ that was, but only he that should have been. But I have prayed G.o.d day and night, and I will go on yet praying, that the man of my love may be the _Leonard_ that yet shall be,--that some day he may turn back to G.o.d and me, and remember the true heart that poured all that love upon him. If it be so, let the Lord order how, and where, and when. For if I may know that it is, when I come into His presence above, I can finish my journey here without the knowledge."

"But it were better to know it, Aunt _Joyce_?" saith _Helen_ tenderly.

Methinks the tale had stirred her heart very much.

"It were happier, _Nelly_," quoth Aunt _Joyce_ softly. "G.o.d knoweth whether it were best. If it be so, He will give it me.--And now is the hardest part of my tale to tell. For after a while, _Milly_, this--_Mary_--came to see what _Leonard_ meant, and methinks she came about the same time to the certainty that she loved one who was not _Leonard_. When he had parted from me he sought her, and there was much bitterness betwixt them. At the last she utterly denied him, and shut the door betwixt him and her: for the which he never forgave her, but at a later time, when in the persecutions under King _Henry_ she came into his power, he used her as cruelly as he might then dare to go. I reckon, had it been under _Queen Mary_, he should have been content with nought less than her blood. But it pleased the good Lord to deliver her, he getting him entangled in some briars of politics that you should little care to hear: and so when she was freed forth of prison, he was shut up therein."

"Then, Aunt _Joyce_, is he a _Papist_?" saith _Helen_, of a startled fashion.

"Ay, _Nell_, he is a black _Papist_. When we all came forth of _Babylon_, he tarried therein."

"And what came of her you called _Mary_, if it please you, _Aunt_?"

quoth I.

"She was wed to one that dwelt at a distance from those parts, _Edith_,"

saith Aunt _Joyce_, in the constrained tone wherein she had begun her story. "And sithence then have I heard at times of _Leonard_, though never meeting him,--but alway as of one that was journeying from bad to worse--winning hearts and then breaking them. Since Queen _Elizabeth_ came in, howbeit, heard I never word of him at all: and I knew not if he were in life or no, till I set eyes on his face yesterday."

We were all silent till Aunt _Joyce_ saith gently--

"Well, _Milly_,--should we have been more kinder if we had let thee alone to break thine heart, thinkest?"

"It runneth not to a certainty that mine should be broke, because others were," mutters _Milly_ stubbornly.

"Thou countest, then, that he which had been false to a thousand maids should be true to the one over?" saith Aunt _Joyce_, with a pitying smile. "Well, such a thing may be possible,--once in a thousand times.

Hardly oftener, methinks, my child. But none is so blind as she that will not see. I must leave the Lord to open thine eyes,--for I wis He had to do it for me."

And Aunt _Joyce_ rose up and went away.

"I marvel who it were she called _Mary_," said I.

"Essay not to guess, dear heart," saith _Helen_ quickly. "'Tis plain Aunt _Joyce_ would not have us know."

"Why, she told us, or as good," quoth _Milisent_, in that bitter fashion she hath had to-day and yesterday. "Said she not, at the first, that 'it were well to get the tale o'er ere _Dulcie_ should come'? 'Tis my Lady _Stafford_, of course."

"I am not so sure of that," saith _Helen_, in a low voice: and methought she had guessed at some other, but would not say out [Note 1]. "I think we were better to go down now."

So down went we all to the great chamber, and there found, with _Mother_, Mistress _Lewthwaite_, that was, as was plain to see, in a mighty taking [much agitated].