Joyce Morrell's Harvest Part 20

"Thou?" saith my Lady, pityingly.

"None knew him but me," made she answer, and her voice grew very troubled. "Not even _Aubrey_, nor _Lettice_. _Bess_ guessed at him after awhile, but not till she had seen him divers times. But for me one glimpse was enough."

Aunt _Joyce's_ work was still now.

"Hadst thou surmised aforetime that it were he?"

Aunt _Joyce_ shook her head.

"No need for surmising, _Dulcie_," she said. "If I were laid in my grave for a year and a day, I should know his step upon the mould above me."

"My poor _Joyce_!" softly quoth my Lady _Stafford_. "Even G.o.d hath no stronger word than 'pa.s.sing the love of women.' Yet a woman's love lasts not out to that in most cases."

"Her heart lasts not out, thou meanest," saith Aunt _Joyce_. "Hearts are weak, _Dulcie_, but love is immortal."

"And hast thou still hope--for him, _Joyce_?" answereth my Lady. "I lost the last atom of mine, years gone."

"Hope of his ultimate salvation? Ay--as long as life lasts. I shall give over hoping for it when I see it."

"But," saith my Lady slowly, as though she scarce liked to say the same, "how if thou never wert to see it?"

"'Between the stirrup and the ground, Mercy I sought, mercy I found.'

"Thou wist that epitaph, _Dulcie_, on him that lost life by a fall from the saddle. My seeing it were comfort, but no necessity. I could go on hoping that G.o.d had seen it."

Aunt _Joyce_ arose and left the chamber. Then saith my Lady _Stafford_ to me--

"There goes a strong soul. There be women such as she: but they are not to be picked, like blackberries, off every bramble. _Edith_, young folks are apt to think love a mere matter of youth and of matrimony.

They cannot make a deeper blunder. The longer love lasts, the stronger it groweth."

"Always, my Lady?" said I.

"Ay," saith she. "That is, if it be love."

We wrought a while without more talk: when suddenly saith my Lady _Stafford_:--

"_Edith_, didst thou see this _Tregarvon_, or how he called himself?"

"Ay, Madam," said I. "He made up to me one morrow, when my sister _Milisent_ and I were on Saint _Hubert's_ Isle in the mere yonder, and I was sat, a-drawing, of a stone."

"Ay so?" quoth she, with some earnestness in her voice. "And what then?"

"I think he took not much of me, Madam," said I.

My Lady _Stafford_ smiled, yet methought somewhat pensively.

"May I wit what he said to thee, _Edith_?"

"Oh, a parcel of stuff touching mine hair and mine eyes, and the like,"

said I. "I knew well enough what colours mine hair and eyes were of, without his telling me. Could I dress mine hair every morrow afore the mirror, and not see?"

"Well, _Edith_," saith she, "methinks he did not take much of thee. I would I could have seen him,"--and her voice grew sadder. "Not that my voice should have had any potency with him: that had it never yet. But I would fain have noted how far the years had changed him, and if--if there seemed any more hope of his amendment than of old time. There was a time when in all _Oxfordshire_ he was allowed the goodliest man, and I fear he was not far from being likewise the worst."

Here come in _Mother_, and my Lady _Stafford_ changed the discourse right quickly. I saw I must say no more. But I am well a.s.sured Aunt _Joyce's Mary_ was never my Lady _Stafford_. Who methinks it were it should serve no good end to set down.

SELWICK HALL, DECEMBER YE XIX.

As we sat this even of the great chamber, saith _Father_:--

"_Stafford_, do you remember our talk some days gone, touching what manner of life there should be in Heaven?"

"That do I well," Sir _Robert_ made answer.

"Well," quoth _Father_, "I have fallen to think more thereupon. And the thought comes to me--wherefore account we always that we shall do but one thing there, and that all shall do the same? Here is _Milisent_-- ay, and _Lettice_ too--that think they should be weary to sit of a cloud and sing for ever and ever."

"Truly, so should I, methinks," saith Sir _Robert_.

"So should we all, I cast no doubt," answers _Father_, "if our capacity for fatigue did extend into that life. But why expect the same thing over and over? It is not so on earth. I am not reading, nor is _Lettice_ sewing, nor _Milisent_ broidering, with no intermission, from the morning to the night. Neither do we all the same fashion of work."

"Ay," saith Aunt _Joyce_, somewhat eagerly; "but the work done here below is needful, _Aubrey_. There shall be no necessity for nought there."

"Art avised o' that, _Joyce_?" saith _Father_.

"Why," saith she, "dost look for brooms and dusters in Heaven? Shall _Bess_ and I sweep out the gold streets, thinkest, or fetch a pan to seethe the fruits of the Tree of Life?"

"One would think," saith Sir _Robert_, "if all be allegorical, as some wise doctors do say, that they should be shadowy brooms that swept parabolical streets."

"Allegorical fiddlesticks!" quoth Aunt _Joyce_. "I did never walk yet o'er a parabolical paving, nor sat me down to rest me of an allegorical chair. Am I to be allegorical, forsooth? You be a poor comforter, Sir _Robert_."

"Soft you now!" saith _Father_. "I enter a _caveat_, as lawyers have it. Methinks I have walked for some years o'er a parabolical paving, and rested me in many an allegorical chair. Thou minglest somewhat too much the spiritual and the material, _Joyce_."

"I count I take thee, _Audrey_," saith she: "thou wouldst say that the allegorical city is for the dwelling of the spirit, and the real for the body. But, pray you, if my spirit have a dwelling in thine allegorical city--"

"Nay, I said not the city were allegorical," quoth he. "Burden not me withal, for in truth I do believe it very real."

"No, that was Sir _Robert_," saith she, "so I will ask at him, as shall be but fair. Where, I pray you, is my body to be, Sir, whilst my soul dwelleth in your parabolical city?"

"There shall be a spiritual body, my mistress," makes he answer, smiling.

"Truth," quoth she, "but I reckon it must be somewhere. It seems me, to my small wit, that if my soul and my spiritual body be to dwell in an allegorical city, then I must needs be allegorical also. And I warrant you, that should not like me a whit."

"Let us not mingle differences," saith _Father_. "Be the spiritual and the allegorical but one thing?"

"Nay, I believe there be two," saith Aunt _Joyce_: "'tis Sir _Robert_ here would have them alike."

"But how would you define them?" saith Sir _Robert_ to _Father_.

"Thus," he made answer. "The spiritual is that which is real, as fully as the material: but it is invisible. The allegorical is that which is shadowy and doth but exist in the fantasy. If I say of these my daughters, they be my jewels, I speak allegorically: for they be not gems, but maidens. But I do not love them in an allegory, but in reality. Love is a moral and spiritual matter, but no allegory. So, Heaven is a spiritual place, but methinks not an allegorical one."

"But the _New Jerusalem_--the Golden City which lieth four-square--that is allegorical, surely!"