The White Rose of Langley Part 17

"But what said he?"

"Who--my Lord of Arundel? The unpiteous, traitorous, hang-dog lither oaf!" Bertram would apparently have chosen more opprobrious words if they would kindly have occurred to him. "Why, he said--'Pray for yourself and your lord, Lady, and let this be; it were the better for you.' The great Devil, to whom he 'longeth, be _his_ aid in the like case!"

"Truly, he may be in the like case one day," said Maude.

"And that were at undern [Eleven o'clock a.m.] this morrow, an' I were King!" cried Bertram wrathfully.

"But what had Master Calverley done?" Bertram dared only whisper the name of the horrible crime of which alone poor Calverley stood accused.

"He was a Lollard--a Gospeller."

"Be they such ill fawtors?" asked Maude in a shocked tone.

"Judge for yourself what manner of men they be," said Bertram indignantly, "when the King's Highness and the Queen, and our own Lady's Grace, and the Lady Princess that was, and the Duke of Lancaster, be of them. Ay, and many another could I name beyond these."

"I will never crede any ill of our Lady's Grace!" said Maude warmly.

"Good morrow, Bertram, my son," said a voice behind them--a voice strange to Maude, but familiar to Bertram.

"Father Wilfred! Christ save you, right heartily! You be here in the nick of time. You are come--"

"I am come, by ordainment of the Lord Prior, to receive certain commands of my Lord Duke touching a book that he desireth to have written and ourned [ornamented] with painting in the Priory," said Wilfred in his quiet manner. "But what aileth yonder young master?--for he seemeth me in trouble."

What ailed poor Hugh was soon told; and Wilfred, after a critical look at him, went up and spoke to him.

"So thou hast a quarrel with G.o.d, my son?"

"Nay! Who may quarrel with G.o.d?" answered Hugh drearily.

"Only men and devils," said Wilfred. "Such as be G.o.d's enemies be alway quarrelling with Him; but such as be His own dear children--should they so?"

"Dealeth He thus with His children?" was the bitter answer.

"Ay, oftentimes; so oft, that He aredeth [tells] us, that they which be alway out of chastising be no sons of His."

Hugh could take no comfort. "You know not what it is!" he said, with the impatience of pain.

"Know I not?" said Wilfred, very tenderly, laying his hand upon Hugh's shoulder. "Youngling, my father fell in fight with the Saracens, and my mother--my blessed mother--was brent for Christ's sake at Cologne."

Hugh looked up at last. The words, the tone, the fellowship of suffering, touched the wrung heart through its own sorrow.

"You know, then!" he said, his voice softer and less bitter.

"'Bithenke ghe on him that suffride such aghenseiynge of synful men aghens himsilff, that ghe be not maad weri, failynge in ghoure soulis.'

Bethink ye: the which signifieth, meditate on Him, arm ye with His patience. Look on Him, and look to Him."

Bertram stared in astonishment. The cautious scriptorius, who never broke bread with Wycliffe, and declined to decide upon his great or small position, was quoting his Bible word for word.

Hugh looked up in Wilfred's face, with the expression of one who had at last found somebody to understand him.

"Father," he said, "did you ever doubt of _every_ thing?"

"Ay," said Wilfred, quietly.

"Even of G.o.d's love? yea, even of G.o.d?"

"Ay."

Bertram was horrified to hear such words. And from Hugh, of all people!

But Wilfred, to his surprise, took them as quietly as if Hugh had been repeating the Creed.

"And what was your remedy?"

"I know but one remedy for all manner of doubt, and travail, and sorrow, Master; and that is to take them unto Christ."

"Yet how so," asked Hugh, heaving a deep sigh, "when we cannot see Christ to take them to Him?"

"I know not that your seeing matters, Master, so that He seeth. And when your doubts come in and vex you, do you but call upon Him with a true heart, desiring to find Him, and He will soon show you that He is.

Ah!" and Wilfred's eyes lighted up, "the solving of all riddles touching Christ's being, is only to talk with Christ."

Bertram could not see that Wilfred had offered Hugh the faintest shadow of comfort; but in some manner inexplicable to him, Hugh seemed comforted thenceforward.

There was a great stir at Langley in the April of 1389; for the King and Queen stayed there a night on their way to Westminster. Maude was in the highest excitement: she had never seen a live King before, and she expected a formidable creature of the lion-rampant type, who would order every body about in the most tyrannical manner, and command Master Warine to be instantly hanged if dinner were not punctual. She saw a very handsome young man of three and twenty years of age, dressed in a much quieter style than any of his suite; of the gentlest manners, a model of courtesy even to the meanest, delicately considerate of every one but himself, and especially and tenderly careful of that darling wife who was the only true friend he had left. Ever after that day, the faintest disparagement of her King would have met with no reception from Maude short of burning indignation.

King Richard recovered his power by a _coup d'etat_, on the 3rd of May, 1389. He suddenly dissolved and reconst.i.tuted his Council, leaving out the traitor Lords Appellants. It was done at the first moment when he had the power to do it. But a year and a half later, Gloucester crept in again, a professedly reformed penitent; and from the hour that he did so, Richard was King no longer.

During all this struggle the Duke of York had kept extremely quiet. The King marked his sense of his uncle's allegiance by creating his son Edward Earl of Rutland. Perhaps, after all, Isabel had more power over her husband than he cared to allow; for when her gentle influence was removed, his conduct altered for the worse. But a stronger influence was at work on him; for his brother of Lancaster had come home; and though Gloucester moulded York at his will when Lancaster was absent, yet in his presence he was powerless. So peace reigned for a time.

And meanwhile, what was pa.s.sing in the domestic circle at Langley?

In the first place, Maude had once more changed her position. From the lower-place of tire-woman, or dresser, to the d.u.c.h.ess, she was now promoted to be bower-maiden to the Lady Constance. This meant that she was henceforth to be her young mistress's constant companion and habitual confidant. She was to sleep on a pallet in her room, to go wherever she went, to be entrusted with the care alike of her jewels and her secrets, and to do everything for her which required the highest responsibility and caution.

In the second place, both Constance and Maude were no longer children, but women. The Princess was now eighteen years of age, while her bower-maiden had reached twenty.

And in the third place, over the calm horizon of Langley had appeared a little cloud, as yet no more than "a man's hand," which was destined in its effects to change the whole current of life there. No one about her had in the least realised it as yet; but the d.u.c.h.ess Isabel was dying.

Very gently and slowly, at a rate which alarmed not even her physician, the Lollard Infanta descended to the portals of the grave. She knew herself whither she was going before any other eyes perceived it; and noiselessly she set her house in order. She executed her last will in terms which show that she died a Gospeller, as distinctly as if she had written it at the outset; she left bequests to her friends--"a fret of pearls to her dear daughter, Constance Le Despenser;" she named two of the most eminent Lollards living (Sir Lewis Clifford and Sir Richard Stury) as her executors; she showed that she retained, like the majority of the Lollards, a belief in Purgatory, by one bequest for ma.s.ses to be sung for her soul; and lastly--a very Protestant item when considered with the rest--she desired to be interred, not by the shrine of any saint or martyr, but "whithersoever her Lord should appoint."

The priests said that she died "very penitent." But for what? For her early follies and sins, no doubt she did. But of course they wished it to be understood that it was for her Wycliffite heresies.

It was about the beginning of February, 1393, that the d.u.c.h.ess died.

Her husband never awoke fully to his irreparable loss until long after he had lost her. But he held her memory in honour at her burial, with a gentle respect which showed some faint sense of it. The cemetery which he selected for her resting-place was that nearest her home--the Priory Church of Langley. There the dust slept quietly; and the soul which had never nestled down on earth, found its first and final home in Heaven.

It might not unreasonably have been expected that Constance, now left the only woman of her family, would have remembered that there was another family to which she also belonged, and a far-off individual who stood to her in the nominal relation of husband. But it did not please her Ladyship to remember any such thing. She liked queening it in her father's palace; and she did not like the prospect of yielding precedence to her mother-in-law, which would have been a necessity of her married life. As to the Lord Le Despenser, she was absolutely indifferent to him. Her childish feeling of contempt had not been replaced by any kindlier one. It was not that she disliked him: she cared too little about him even to hate him. When the thought of going to Cardiff crossed her mind, which was not often, it was always a.s.sociated with the old Lady Le Despenser, not at all with the young Lord.

Now and then the husband and wife met for a few minutes. The Lord Le Despenser had grown into a handsome and most graceful gentleman, of accomplished manners and n.o.ble bearing. When they thus met, they greeted each other with formal reverences; the Baron kissed the hand of the Princess; each hoped the other was well; they exchanged a few remarks on the prominent topics of the day, and then took leave with equal ceremony, and saw no more of one another for some months.

The Lady Le Despenser, it must be admitted, was not the woman calculated to attract such a nature as that of Constance. She was a Lollard, by birth no less than by marriage; but in her creed she was an ascetic of the sternest and most unbending type. In her judgment a laugh was indecorum, and smelling a rose was indulgence of the flesh. Her behaviour to her royal daughter-in-law was marked by the utmost outward deference, yet she never failed to leave the impression on Constance's mind that she regarded her as an outsider and a reprobate. Moreover, the Lady Le Despenser had some singular notions on the subject of love.

Fortunately for her children, her heart was larger than her creed, and often overstepped the bounds a.s.signed; but her theory was that human affections should be kept made up in labelled parcels, so much and no more to be allowed in each case. Favouritism was idolatry affectionate words were foolish condescensions to the flesh; while loving caresses savoured altogether of the evil one.