The White Ladies of Worcester Part 66

If the Bishop made the way easy, she might return to the Nunnery.

But all the true life of her would be left behind with her lover.

She would bring to the Cloister a lacerated conscience, and a broken heart.

Surely the two men who loved her, if they thrust away all thought of self, and thought only of her, could save her this anguish.

At once the Bishop resolved to do his part.

"My dear Hugh," he said, "you did well to come to me in order to consult over these plans before taking the irrevocable step which should set them in motion. I, alone, could reinstate your wife as Prioress of the White Ladies; moreover my continued presence here would be essential, to secure her comfort in that reinstatement. And I shall not be here. I am shortly leaving Worcester, leaving this land and returning to my beauteous Italy. The Holy Father has been pleased to tell me privately of high preferment shortly to be offered me. I have to-day decided to accept it. I return to Italy a Cardinal of Holy Church."

Hugh rose to his feet and bowed. An immense scorn blazed in his eyes.

"My Lord High Cardinal, I congratulate you! That a cardinal's hat should tempt you from your cathedral, from this n.o.ble English city, from your people who love you, from the land of your birth, may perhaps be understood. But that, for the sake of Church preferment, however high, you should willingly depart, leaving Mora in sorrow, Mora in difficulty, Mora needing your help----"

The Knight paused, amazed. The Bishop, who seldom laughed aloud, was laughing. Yet no! The Bishop, who never wept, seemed near to weeping.

The scales fell from Hugh's eyes, even before the Bishop spoke. He realised a love as great as his own.

"Ah, foolish lad!" said Symon of Worcester; "bent upon thine own ways, and easy to deceive. When I spoke of going, I said it for her sake, hoping the prospect of my absence might hold you from your purpose.

But now truly am I convinced that you are bent upon risking your own happiness, and imperilling hers. Therefore will I devise some means of detaining the Holy Father's messenger, so that my answer need not be given until two weeks are past. You will reach Mora, at longest, five days from this. As soon as she decides what she will do, send word to me by a fast messenger. Should she elect to return to the Nunnery, state when and where, upon the road, I am to meet her. Her habit as Prioress, and her cross of office, I have here. The former you returned to me, from the hostel; the latter I found in her cell. You must take them with you. If she returns, she must return fully robed.

If, on the other hand, she should decide to remain with you; if--as may G.o.d grant--she is content, and requires no help from me, send me this news by messenger. I can then betake myself to that fair land to which I first went for her sake; left for her sake, and to which I shall most gladly return, if her need of me is over. The time I state allows a four days' margin for vacillation."

"My lord," said the Knight, humbly, "forgive the wrong I did you.

Forgive that I took in earnest that which you meant in jest; or rather, I do truly think, that which you hoped would turn me from my purpose.

Alas, I would indeed that I might rightly be turned therefrom."

"Hugh," said the Bishop, eagerly, "you deemed her justified in coming to you, apart from any vision."

"True," replied the Knight, "but I cannot feel justified in taking her, and all she would give me, knowing she gives it, with a free heart, because of her faith in the vision. Moments of purest joy would be clouded by my secret shame. Being aware of the deception, I too should be deceiving her; I, whom she loves and trusts."

"To withhold a truth is not to lie," a.s.serted the Bishop.

"My lord," replied Hugh d'Argent, rising to his feet and standing erect, his hand upon his sword, "I cannot reason of these things; I cannot define the difference between withholding a truth and stating a lie. But when mine Honour sounds a challenge, I hear; and I ride out to do battle--against myself, if need be; or, if it must so be, against another. On Eastern battle-fields, in Holy War, I won a name known throughout all the camp, known also to the enemy: 'The Knight of the Silver Shield.' Our name is Argent, and we ever have the right to carry a pure silver shield. But I won the name because my shield was always bright; because not once in battle did it fall in the dust; because it never was allowed to tarnish. So bright it was, that as I rode, bearing it before me, reflecting the rays of the sun, it dazzled and blinded the enemy. My lord, I cannot tarnish my silver shield by conniving at falsehood, or keeping silence when mine Honour bids me speak."

Looking at the gallant figure before him, the Bishop's soul responded to the n.o.ble words, and he longed to praise them and applaud. But he thought of Mora's peace of mind, Mora's awakened heart and dawning happiness. For her sake he must make a final stand.

"My dear Hugh," he said, "all this talk, of a silver shield and of the challenge of honour, is well enough for the warrior on the battle-field. But the lover has to learn the harder lesson; he has to give up Self, even the Self which holds honour dear. When you polished your silver shield, keeping it so bright, what saw you reflected therein? Why, your own proud face. Even so, now, you fear the faintest tarnish on your sense of honour, but you will keep that silver shield bright at Mora's expense, riding on proudly alone in your glory, reflecting the sun, dazzling all beholders, while your wife who loved and trusted you, Mora, who told you the sweet wonder of her love in words of deepest tenderness, lies desolate in the dark, with a shattered life, and a broken heart. Hugh, I would have you think of the treasure of her golden heart, rather than of the brightness of your own selfish, silver shield."

"Selfish!" cried the Knight. "Selfish! Is it selfish to hold honour dear? Is it selfish to be ashamed to deceive the woman one loves?

Have I, who have so striven in all things to put her welfare first, been selfish towards my wife in this hour of crisis?"

He sat down, heavily; leaned his elbows on his knees, and dropped his head into his hands.

This att.i.tude of utter dejection filled the Bishop with thankfulness.

Was he, in the very moment when he had given up all hope of winning, about to prove the victor?

"Perilously selfish, my dear Hugh," he said. "But, thank Heaven, no harm has yet been done. Listen to me and I will shew you how you may keep your honour safely untarnished, yet withhold from Mora all knowledge which might cause her disquietude of mind, thus securing her happiness and your own."

CHAPTER LI

TWO n.o.bLE HEARTS GO DIFFERENT WAYS

On that same afternoon, an hour before sunset, the two men who loved Mora faced one another, for a final farewell.

The Bishop had said all he had to say. Without interruption, his words had flowed steadily on; eloquent, logical, conciliatory, persuasive.

At first he had talked to the top of the Knight's head, to the clenched hands, to the arms outstretched across the table.

He had wondered what thoughts were at work beneath the crisp thickness of that dark hair. He had wished the rigid att.i.tude of tense despair might somewhat relax. He had used the most telling inflexions of his persuasive voice in order to bring this about, but without success. He had wished the Knight would break silence, even to rage or to disagree.

To that end he had cast as a bait an intentional slip in a statement of facts; and, later on, a palpable false deduction in a weighty argument.

But the Knight had not risen to either.

After a while Hugh had lifted his head, and leaned back in his chair; fixing his eyes, in his turn, upon the banner hanging from the rafters.

It had ceased to wave gently to and fro. Probably Father Benedict had closed the trap-door, concealed behind an upright beam, through which he was wont to peer down into the banqueting hall below, in order to satisfy himself that all was well and that the Reverend Father needed naught.

Let it be here recorded that this exceeding vigilance, on the part of Father Benedict, met with but scant reward. For, having deduced a draught, and its reason, from the slight stirring of the banner during his conversation with the Knight, the Bishop gave certain secret instructions to Brother Philip, with the result that the next time the Chaplain peered down upon a private conference he found, at its close, the door by which he had gained access to the roof chamber barred on the outside, and, forcing it, he was in no better case, the ladder which connected it with another disused chamber below having been removed. Thereafter Father Benedict watched the Bishop, and his guest, partake of three meals, before he could bring himself to make known his predicament, and beg to be released. And, even then, the Bishop was amazingly slow in locating the place from which issued the agitated voice imploring a.s.sistance. Several brethren were summoned to help; so that quite a little crowd stood gazing up at the pallid countenance of Father Benedict, framed in the trap-door as, lying upon his very empty stomach, he called down replies to the Bishop's questions; vainly striving to give a plausible reason for the peculiar situation in which he was discovered.

But, to return to the interview which brought about this later development.

The Knight had lifted his head, yet had still remained silent and impa.s.sive.

Where at length the Bishop had paused, awaiting comment of some kind, Hugh d'Argent, removing his eyes from the rafters, had asked:

"When, my lord, do you propose to meet the Prioress, should my wife, upon learning the truth, elect to return to the Nunnery?"

Thus had the Bishop been forced to realise that the flow of his eloquence, the ripple of his humour, the strong current of his arguments, the gentle lapping of his tenderness, the breakers of his threats, and the thunderous billows of his denunciations, had alike expended themselves against the rock of the Knight's unshakable resolve, and left it standing.

Whereupon, in silence, the Bishop had risen, and had led the way to the library.

Here they now faced one another in final farewell.

Each knew that his loss would be the other's gain; his gain, the other's irreparable loss.

Yet, at that moment, each thought only of Mora's peace of soul. They did but differ in their conception of the way in which that peace might best be preserved and maintained.

"I must take her cross of office, my Lord Bishop," said the Knight, with decision.

The Bishop went to a chest, standing in one corner of the room, opened it, and bent over it, his back to Hugh d'Argent; then, slipping his hand into his bosom drew therefrom a cross of gold gleaming with emeralds. Shutting down the ma.s.sive lid of the chest, he returned, and placed the cross in the outstretched hand of the Knight.

"I entrust it to you, my dear Hugh, only on one condition: that it shall without fail return to me in two weeks' time. Should you decide to tell your wife the true history of the vision, I must see this cross of office upon her breast when I meet her riding back to Worcester, once more Prioress of the White Ladies. If, on the other hand, wiser counsel prevails, and you decide not to tell her, you must, by swift messenger, at once return it to me in a sealed packet."

"I shall tell her," said the Knight. "If she elects to leave me, you will see the cross upon her breast, my lord. If she elects to stay, you shall receive it by swift messenger."