The Well in the Desert Part 1

The Well in the Desert.

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 G.o.d-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 pa.s.s 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 Suss.e.x 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 m.u.f.fled 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 pa.s.sing; 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 pa.s.sed in at the portcullis. It was headed by a sumptuous litter, beside which rode a gentleman magnificently attired. Behind came a hundred hors.e.m.e.n in livery, and the line was closed by a crowd of archers in Lincoln green, bearing cross-bows. From the litter, a.s.sisted 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 n.o.ble Lordship," answered she with a low reverence; "it shall be found as well appointed as our poor labours might compa.s.s."

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 cas.e.m.e.nt 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 n.o.bles.

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-gla.s.s. 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 compa.s.sion, Mother and Maiden?"

But the pa.s.sionate 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 cas.e.m.e.nt 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 n.o.body whether she looked well or ill. In a word, _she_ signified to n.o.body. 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 appet.i.te, 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 cas.e.m.e.nt of her turret-chamber--hers, only because n.o.body 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, pa.s.sionate 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 n.o.ble 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!