The White Ladies of Worcester Part 53

"Mora," said Hugh, "I have something to tell thee."

"I listen," she said.

"My wife--so wholly, so completely, do I love thee, that I would not consciously keep anything from thee. So deeply do I love thee, that I would sooner any wrong or sin of mine were known to thee and by thee forgiven, than that thou shouldest think me one whit better than I am."

He paused.

Her eyes were tender and compa.s.sionate. Often she had listened, with a patient heart of charity, to the tedious, morbid, self-centred confessions of kneeling nuns, who watched with anxious eyes for the sign which would mean that they might clutch at the hem of her robe and press it to their lips in token that they were forgiven.

But she had had no experience of the sins of men. What had the "splendid Knight" upon his conscience, which must now be told her, in this sunny arbour, on the morning of their bridal day?

Her heart throbbed painfully. Alas, it was still the heart of a nun.

It would not be controlled. Must she hear wild tales of wickedness and shame, of which she would but partly understand the meaning?

Oh, for the calm of the Cloister! Oh, for the sheltered purity of her quiet cell!

Yet his eyes, still meeting hers, were clear and fearless.

"I listen," she said.

"Mora, not long ago a wondrous tale was told me of a man's great love for thee--a man, n.o.bler than I, in that he mastered all selfish desires; a love higher than mine, in that it put thy welfare, in all things, first. Hearing this tale, I failed both myself and thee, for I said: 'I pray heaven that, if she come to me, she may never know that she once won the love of so greatly better a man than I.' But, since I clasped thy hand in mine, and the Bishop, laying his on either side, gave thee to be my wife, I have known there would be no peace for me if I feared to trust thee with this knowledge, because that the man who loved thee was a better man than the man who, by G.o.d's mercy and our Lady's grace, has won thee."

As the Knight spoke thus, the grey eyes fixed on his face grew wide with wonder; soft, with a great compunction; yet, at the corners, shewed a little crinkle in which the Bishop would instantly have recognised the sign of approaching merriment.

Was this then a sample of the unknown sins of men? Nothing here, surely, to cause the least throb of apprehension, even to the heart of a nun! But what strange tale had reached the ears of this most dear and loyal Knight? She leaned a little nearer to him, speaking in a tone which was music to his heart.

"Dear Knight of mine," she said, "no tale of a man's love for me can have been a true one. Yet am I glad that, deeming it true, and feeling as it was your first impulse to feel, you now tell me quite frankly what you felt, thus putting from yourself all sense of wrong, while giving me the chance to say to you, that none more n.o.ble than this faithful Knight can have loved me; for, saving a few Court pages, mostly popinjays, and Humphry of Camforth, of whom the less said the better, no other man hath loved me."

More kindly she looked on him than she yet had looked. She leaned across the table.

By reaching out his arms he could have caught her lovely face between his hands.

Her eyes were merry. Her lips smiled.

Greatly tempted was the Knight to agree that, saving himself, and Humphry of Camforth, of whom the less said the better, none save Court popinjays had loved her. Yet in his heart he knew that ever between them would be this fact of his knowledge of the love of Father Gervaise for her, and of the n.o.ble renunciation inspired by that love. He had no intention of betraying the Bishop; but Mora's own explanation, making it quite clear that she would not be likely to suspect the ident.i.ty of the Bishop with his supposed cousin, Father Gervaise, seemed to the Knight to remove the one possible reason for concealment.

He was willing to risk present loss, rather than imperil future peace.

With an effort which made his voice almost stern: "The tale was a true one," he said.

She drew back, regarding him with grave eyes, her hands folded before her.

"Tell me the tale," she said, "and I will p.r.o.nounce upon its truth."

"Years ago, Mora, when you were a young maiden at the Court, attending on the Queen, you were most deeply loved by one who knew he could never ask you in marriage. That being so, so n.o.ble was his nature and so unselfish his love, that he would not give himself the delight of seeing you, nor the enjoyment of your friendship, lest, being so strong a thing, his love--even though unexpressed--should reach and stir your heart to a response which, might hinder you from feeling free to give yourself, when a man who could offer all sought to win you. Therefore, Mora, he left the Court, he left the country. He went to foreign lands. He thought not of himself. He desired for you the full completion which comes by means of wedded love. He feared to hinder this. So he went."

Her face still expressed incredulous astonishment.

"His name?" she demanded, awaiting the answer with parted lips, and widely-open eyes.

"Father Gervaise," said the Knight.

He saw her slowly whiten, till scarce a vestige of colour remained.

For some minutes she spoke no word; both sat silent, Hugh ruefully facing his risks, and inclined to repent of his honesty.

At length: "And who told you this tale," she said; "this tale of the love of Father Gervaise for a young maid, half his age?"

"Symon of Worcester told it me, three nights ago."

"How came the Bishop to know so strange and so secret a thing? And knowing it, how came he to tell it to you?"

"He had it from Father Gervaise himself. He told it to me, because his remembrance of the sacrifice made so long ago in order that the full completion of wifehood and motherhood might be thine, had always inclined him to a wistful regret over thy choice of the monastic life, with its resultant celibacy; leading him, from the first, to espouse and further my cause. In wedding us to-day, methinks the Bishop felt he was at last securing the consummation of the n.o.ble renunciation made so long ago by Father Gervaise."

With a growing dread at his heart, Hugh watched the increasing pallor of her face, the hard line of the lips which, but a few moments before, had parted in such gentle sweetness.

"Alas!" he exclaimed, "I should not have told thee! With my clumsy desire to keep nothing from thee, I have spoilt an hour which else might have been so perfect."

"You did well to tell me, dear Knight of mine," she said, a ripple of tenderness pa.s.sing across her stern face, as swiftly and gently as the breeze stirs a cornfield. "Nor is there anything in this world so perfect as the truth. If the truth opened an abyss which plunged me into h.e.l.l, I would sooner know it, than attempt to enter Paradise across the flimsy fabric of a lie!"

Her voice, as she uttered these words, had in it the ring which was wont to petrify wrong-doers of the feebler kind among her nuns.

"Dear Knight, had the Bishop not forestalled me when he named his palfrey, truly I might have found a fine new name for you! But now, I pray you of your kindness, leave me alone with my fallen image for a little s.p.a.ce, that I may gather up the fragments and give them decent burial."

With which her courage broke. She stretched her clasped hands across the table and laid her head upon her arms.

Despair seized the Knight as he stood helpless, looking down upon that proud head laid low.

He longed to lay his hand upon the golden softness of her hair.

But her shoulders shook with a hard, tearless sob, and the Knight fled from the arbour.

As he paced the lawn, on which the Bishop had promenaded the evening before, Hugh cursed his rashness in speaking; yet knew, in the heart of his heart, that he could not have done otherwise. Mora's words concerning truth, gave him a background of comfort. Even so had he ever himself felt. But would it prove that his honesty had indeed shattered his chances of happiness, and hers?

A new name? . . . What might it be? . . . What the mischief, had the Bishop named his palfrey? . . . Sheba? Nay, that was the a.s.s!

Solomon? Nay, that was the mare! Yet--how came a mare to be named Solomon?

In his disturbed mental state it irritated him unreasonably that a mare should be called after a king with seven hundred wives! Then he remembered "black, but comely," and arrived at the right name, Shulamite. Of course! Not Solomon but Shulamite. He had read that love-poem of the unnamed Eastern shepherd, with the Rabbi in the mountain fastness. The Rabbi had pointed out that the word used in that description signified "sunburned." The lovely Shulamite maiden, exposed to the Eastern sun while tending her kids and keeping the vineyards, had tanned a ruddy brown, beside which the daughters of Jerusalem, enclosed in King Solomon's scented harem, looked pale as wilting lilies. Remembering the glossy coat of the black mare, Hugh wondered, with a momentary sense of merriment, whether the Bishop supposed the maiden of the "Song of Songs" to have been an Ethiopian.

Then he remembered "Iconoklastes." Yes, surely! The palfrey was Iconoklastes. Now wherefore gave the Bishop such a name to his white palfrey?

Striding blindly about the lawn, of a sudden the Knight stepped full on to a flower-bed. At once he seemed to hear the Bishop's gentle voice: "I named him Iconoklastes because he trampled to ruin some flower-beds on which I spent much time and care, and of which I was inordinately fond."

Ah! . . . That was it! The destroyer of fair bloom and blossom, of buds of promise; of the loveliness of a tended garden. . . . Was this then what he seemed to Mora? He, who had forced her to yield to the insistence of his love? . . . In her chaste Convent cell, she could have remained true to this Ideal love of her girlhood: and, now that she knew it to have been called forth by love, could have received, mentally, its full fruition. Also, in time she might have discovered the ident.i.ty of the Bishop with Father Gervaise, and long years of perfect friendship might have proved a solace to their sundered hearts, had not he--the trampler upon flower-beds--rudely intervened.

And yet--Mora had been betrothed to him, her love had been his, long after Father Gervaise had left the land.

How could he win her back to be once more as she was when they parted on the castle battlements eight years before?