Chapter Six.
Destroyed by the Hurricane.
“Our plans may be disjointed,
But we may calmly rest:
What God has once appointed
Is better than our best.”—Frances Ridley Havergal.
The Countess left Clarice prostrate on the ground, sobbing as if her heart would break—Olympias feebly trying to raise and soothe her, Roisia looking half-stunned, and Felicia palpably amused by the scene.
“Thou hadst better get up, child,” said Diana, in a tone divided between constraint and pity. “It will do thee no good to lie there. We shall all have to put up with the same thing in our turn. I haven’t got the man I should have chosen; but I suppose it won’t matter a hundred years hence.”
“I am not so sure of that,” said Roisia, in a low voice.
“Oh, thou art disappointed, I know,” said Diana. “I would hand Fulk over to thee with pleasure, if I could. I don’t want him. But I suppose he will do as well as another, and I shall take care to be mistress. It is something to be married—to anybody.”
“It is everything to be married to the right man,” said Roisia; “but it is something very awful to be married to the wrong one.”
“Oh, one soon gets over that,” was Diana’s answer. “So long as you can have your own way, I don’t see that anything signifies much. I shall not admire myself in my wedding-dress any the less because my squire is not exactly the one I hoped it might be.”
“Diana, I don’t understand thee,” responded Roisia. “What does it matter, I should say, having thine own way in little nothings so long as thou art not to have it in the one thing for which thou really carest? Thou dost not mean to say that a velvet gown would console thee for breaking thy heart?”
“But I do,” said Diana. “I must be a countess before I could wear velvet; and I would marry any man in the world who would make me a countess.”
Mistress Underdone, who had lifted up Clarice, and was holding her in her arms, petting her into calmness as she would a baby, now thought fit to interpose.
“My maids,” she said, “there are women who have lost their hearts, and there are women who were born without any. The former case has the more suffering, yet methinks the latter is really the more pitiable.”
“Well, I think those people pitiable enough who let their hearts break their sleep and interfere with their appetites,” replied Diana. “I have got over my disappointment already; and Clarice will be a simpleton if she do not.”
“I expect Clarice and I will be simpletons,” said Roisia, quietly.
“Please yourselves, and I will please myself,” answered Diana. “Now, mistress, Clarice seems to have given over crying for a few seconds; may we see the gear?”
“Oh, I want Father Bevis!” sobbed Clarice, with a fresh gush of tears.
“Ay, my dove, thou wilt be the better of shriving,” said Mistress Underdone, tenderly. “Sit thee down a moment, and I will see to Father Bevis. Wait awhile, Diana.”
It was not many minutes before she came back with Father Bevis, who took Clarice into his oratory; and as it was a long while before she rejoined them, the others—Roisia excepted—had almost time to forget the scene they had witnessed, in the interest of turning over Diana’s trousseau, and watching her try on hoods and mantles.
The interview with Father Bevis was unsatisfactory to Clarice. She wanted comfort, and he gave her none. Advice he was ready with in plenty; but comfort he could not give her, because he could not see why she wanted it. He was simply incapable of understanding her. He was very kind, and very anxious to comfort her, if he could only have told how to do it. But love—spiritual love excepted—was a stranger to his bosom. No one had ever loved him; he could not remember his parents; he had never had brother nor sister; and he had never made a friend. His heart was there, but it had never been warmed to life. Perhaps he came nearest to loving the Earl his master; but even this feeling awakened very faint pulsations. His capacity for loving human beings had been simply starved to death. Such a man as this, however anxious to be kind and helpful, of course could not enter in the least into the position of Clarice. He told her many very true things, if she had been capable of receiving them; he tried his very best to help her; but she felt through it all that they were barbarians to each other, and that Father Bevis regarded her as partially incomprehensible and wholly silly.
Father Bevis told Clarice that the chief end of man was to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever; that no love was worthy in comparison with His; that he who loved father and mother more than Christ was not worthy of Him. All very true, but the stunned brain and lacerated heart could not take it in. The drugs were pure and precious, but they were not the medicine for her complaint. She only felt a sensation of repulsion.
Clarice did not know that the Earl was doing his very best to rescue her. He insisted on Father Miles going to the Countess about it; nay, he even ventured an appeal to her himself, though it always cost him great pain to attempt a conversation with this beloved but irresponsive woman. But he took nothing by his motion. The Countess was as obstinate as she was absolute. If anything, the opposition to her will left her just a shade more determined. In vain her husband pleaded earnestly with her not to spoil two lives. Hers had been spoiled, she replied candidly: these ought not to be better off, nor should they be.
“Life has been spoiled for us both,” said the Earl, sadly; “but I should have thought that a reason why we might have been tenderer to others.”
“You are a fool!” said the Countess with a flash of angry scorn.
They were the first words she had spoken to him for eighteen years.
“Maybe, my Lady,” was the gentle answer. “It would cost me less to be accounted a fool than it would to break a heart.”
And he left her, feeling himself baffled and his endeavours useless, yet with a glow at his heart notwithstanding. His Margaret had spoken to him at last. That her words were angry, even abusive, was a consideration lost in the larger fact. Tears which did not fall welled up from the soft heart to the dove-like eyes, and he went out to the terrace to compose himself. “O Margaret, Margaret! if you could have loved me!” He never thought of blaming her—only of winning her as a dim hope of some happy future, to be realised when it was God’s will. He had never yet dared to look his cross in the face sufficiently to add, if it were God’s will.
When the Monday came, which was to be the last day of Clarice’s maiden life, it proved a busy, bustling day, with no time for thought until the evening. Clarice lived through it as best she might. Diana seemed to have put her disappointment completely behind her, and to be thoroughly consoled by the bustle and her trousseau.
One consideration never occurred to any of the parties concerned, which would be thought rather desirable in the nineteenth century. This was, that the respective bridegrooms should have any interview with their brides elect, or in the slightest degree endeavour to make themselves agreeable. They met at meals in the great hall, but they never exchanged a word. Clarice did not dare to lift her eyes, lest she should meet those either of Vivian or Piers. She kept them diligently fixed upon her trencher, with which she did little else than look at it.
The evening brought a lull in the excitement and busy labour. The Countess, attended by Felicia, had gone to the Palace on royal invitation. Clarice sat on the terrace, her eyes fixed on the river which she did not see, her hands lying listlessly in her lap. Though she had heard nothing, that unaccountable conviction of another presence, which comes to us all at times, seized upon her; and she looked up to see Piers Ingham.
The interview was long, and there is no need to add that it was painful. The end came at last.
“Wilt thou forget me, Clarice?” softly asked Piers.
“I ought,” was the answer, with a gush of tears, “if I can.”
“I cannot,” was the reply. “But one pain I can spare thee, my beloved. The Lady means to retain thee in her service as damsel of the chamber.” (Note 1.)
If Clarice could have felt any lesser grief beside the one great one, she would have been sorry to hear that.
“I shall retire,” said Sir Piers, “from my Lord’s household. I will not give thee the misery of meeting me day by day. Rather I will do what I can to help thee to forget me. It is the easier for me, since I have had to offend my Lady by declining the hand of Felicia de Fay, which she was pleased to offer me.”
“The Lady offered Felicia to thee?”
Sir Piers bent his head in assent. Clarice felt as if she could have poisoned Felicia, and have given what arsenic remained over to the Lady Margaret.
“And are we never to meet again?” she asked, with an intonation of passionate sorrow.
“That must depend on God’s will,” said Sir Piers, gravely.
Clarice covered her face with both hands, and the bitter tears trickled fast through her fingers.
“Oh, why is God’s will so hard?” she cried. “Could He not have left us in peace? We had only each other.”
“Hush, sweet heart! It is wrong to say that. And yet it is hardly possible not to think it.”
“It is not possible!” sobbed Clarice. “Does not God know it is not possible?”
“I suppose He must,” said Sir Piers, gloomily.
There was no comfort in the thought to either. There never is any to those who do not know God. And Piers was only feeling after Him, if haply he might find Him, and barely conscious even of that; while Clarice had not reached even that point. To both of them, in this very anguish, Christ was saying, “Come unto Me;” but their own cry of pain hindered them from hearing Him. It was not likely they should hear, just then, when the sunlight of life was being extinguished, and the music was dying to its close. But afterwards, in the silence and the darkness, when the sounds were hushed and the lights were out, and there was nothing that could be done but to endure, then the still, small voice might make itself heard, and the crushed hearts might sob out their answer.
So they parted. “They took but ane kiss, and tare themselves away,” to meet when it was God’s will, and not knowing on which side of the river of death that would be.
Half an hour had passed since Sir Piers’ step had died away on the terrace, and Clarice still sat where he had left her, in crushed and silent stillness. If this night could only be the end of it! If things had not to go on!
“Clarice,” said a pitying voice; and a hand was laid upon her head as if in fatherly blessing.
Clarice was too stunned with pain to remember her courtly duties. She only looked up at Earl Edmund.
“Clarice, my poor child! I want thee to know that I did my best for thee.”
“I humbly thank your Lordship,” Clarice forced herself to say.
“And it may be, my child, though it seems hard to believe, that God is doing His best for thee too.”
“Then what would His worst be?” came in a gush from Clarice.
“It might be that for which thou wouldst thank Him now.”
The sorrowing girl was arrested in spite of herself, for the Earl spoke in that tone of quiet certainty which has more effect on an undecided mind than any words. She wondered how he knew, not realising that he knows “more than the ancients” who knows God and sorrow.
“My child,” said the Earl again, “man’s best and God’s best are often very different things. In the eyes of Monseigneur Saint Jacob, the best thing would have been to spare his son from being cast into the pit and sold to the Ishmaelites. But God’s best was to sell the boy into slavery, and to send him into a dungeon, and then to lift him up to the steps of the king’s throne. When then comes, Clarice, we shall be satisfied with what happened to us now.”
“When will it come, my Lord?” asked Clarice, in a dreary tone.
“When it is best,” replied the Earl quietly.
“Your Lordship speaks as if you knew!” said Clarice.
“God knows. And he who knows God may be sure of everything else.”
“Is it so much to know God?”
“It is life. ‘Without God’ and ‘Without hope’ are convertible terms.”
“My Lord,” said Clarice, wondering much to hear a layman use language which it seemed to her was only fit for priests, “how may one know God?”
“Go and ask Him. How dost thou know any one? Is it not by converse and companionship?”
There was a silent pause till the Earl spoke again.
“Clarice,” he said, “our Lord has a lesson to teach thee. It rests with thee to learn it well or ill. If thou choose to be idle and obstinate, and refuse to learn, thou mayst sit all day long on the form in disgrace, and only have the task perfect at last when thou art wearied out with thine own perverseness. But if thou take the book willingly, and apply thyself with heart and mind, the task will be soon over, and the teacher may give thee leave to go out into the sunshine.”
“My Lord,” said Clarice, “I do not know how to apply your words here. How can I learn this task quickly?”
“Dost thou know, first, what the task is?”
“Truly, no.”
“Then let a brother tell thee who has had it set to him. It is a hard lesson, Clarice, and one that an inattentive scholar can make yet harder if he will. It is, ‘Not my will, but Thine, be done.’”
“I cannot! I cannot!” cried Clarice passionately.
“Some scholars say that,” replied the Earl gently, “until the evening shadows grow very long. They are the weariest of all when they reach home.”
“My Lord, pardon me, but you cannot understand it!” Clarice stood up. “I am young, and you—”
“I am over forty years,” replied the Earl. “Ah, child, dost thou make that blunder?—dost thou think the child’s sorrows worse than the man’s? I have known both, and I tell thee the one is not to be compared to the other. Young hearts are apt to think it, for grief is a thing new and strange to them. But if ever it become to thee as thy daily bread, thou wilt understand it better. It has been mine, Clarice, for eighteen years.”
That was a year more than Clarice had been in the world. She looked up wonderingly into the saddened, dove-like Plantagenet eyes—those eyes characteristic of the House—so sweet in repose, so fiery in anger. Clarice had but a dim idea what his sorrow was.
“My Lord,” she said, half inquiringly, “methinks you never knew such a grief as mine?”
The smile which parted the Earl’s lips was full of pity.
“Say rather, maiden, that thou never knewest one like mine. But God knows both, Clarice, and He pities both, and when His time comes He will comfort both. At the best time, child! Only let us acquaint ourselves with Him, for so only can we be at peace. And now, farewell. I had better go in and preach my sermon to myself.”
Clarice was left alone again. She did not turn back to exactly the same train of thought. A new idea had been given her, which was to become the germ of a long train of others. She hardly put it into words, even to herself; but it was this—that God meant something. He was not sitting on the throne of the universe in placid indifference to her sorrows; neither was He a malevolent Being who delighted in interfering with the plans of His creatures simply to exhibit His own power. He was doing this—somehow—for her benefit. She saw neither the how nor the why; but He saw them, and He meant good to her. All the world was not limited to the Slough of Despond at her feet. There was blue sky above.
Very vaguely Clarice realised this. But it was sufficient to soften the rocky hardness which had been the worst element of her pain—to take away the blind chance against which her impotent wings had been beaten in vain efforts to escape from the dark cage. It was that contact with “the living will of a living person,” which gives the human element to what would otherwise be hard, blind, pitiless fate.
Clarice rose, and looked up to the stars. No words came. The cry of her heart was, “O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me.” But she was too ignorant to weave it into a prayer. When human hearts look up to God in wordless agony, the Intercessor translates the attitude into the words of Heaven.
Sad or bright, there was no time for thought on the Tuesday morning. The day was bitterly cold, for it was the 16th of January 1291, and a heavy hoar-frost silvered all the trees, and weighed down the bushes in the Palace garden. Diana, wrapped in her white furs, was the picture of health and merriment. Was it because she really had not enough heart to care, or because she was determined not to give herself a moment to consider? Clarice, white as the fur round her throat, pale and heavy-eyed, grave and silent, followed Diana into the Palace chapel. The Countess was there, handsomely attired, and the Earl, in golden armour; but they stood on opposite sides of the chancel, and the former ignored her lord’s existence. Diana’s wedding came first. De Chaucombe behaved a little more amiably than usual, and, contrary to all his habits, actually offered his hand to assist his bride to rise. Then Diana fell back to the side of the Countess, and Fulk to that of the Earl, and Clarice recognised that the moment of her sacrifice was come.
With one passionately pleading look at the Lady Margaret—who met it as if she had been made of stone—Clarice slowly moved forward to the altar. She shuddered inwardly as Vivian Barkeworth took her hand into his clasp, and answered the queries addressed to her in so low a voice that Father Miles took the words for granted. It seemed only a few minutes before she woke to the miserable truth that she was now Vivian’s wife, and that to think any more of Piers Ingham was a sin against God.
Clarice dragged herself through the bridal festivities—how, she never knew. Diana was the life of the party. So bright and gay she was that she might never have heard of such a thing as disappointment. She danced with everybody, entered into all the games with the zest of an eager child, and kept the hall ringing with merry laughter, while Clarice moved through them all as if a weight of lead were upon her, and looked as though she should never smile again. Accident at length threw the two brides close together.
“Art thou going to look thus woe-begone all thy life through, Clarice?” inquired the Lady De Chaucombe.
“I do not know,” answered Clarice, gloomily. “I only hope it will not be long.”
“What will not be long?—thy sorrowful looks?”
“No—my life.”
“Don’t let me hear such nonsense,” exclaimed Diana, with a little of her old sharpness. “Men are all deceivers, child. There is not one of them worth spoiling a woman’s life for. Clarice, don’t be a simpleton!”
“Not more than I can help,” said Clarice, with the shadow of a smile; and then De Echingham came up and besought her hand for the next dance, and she was caught away again into the whirl.
The dancing, which was so much a matter of course at a wedding, that even the Countess did not venture to interfere with it, was followed by the hoydenish romps which were considered equally necessary, and which fell into final desuetude about the period of the accession of the House of Hanover. King Charles the First’s good taste had led him to frown upon them, and utterly to prohibit them at his own wedding; but the people in general were attached to their amusements, rough and even gross as they often were, and the improvement filtered down from palace to cottage only very slowly.
The cutting of the two bride-cakes, as usual, was one of the most interesting incidents. It was then, and long afterwards, customary to insert three articles in a bride-cake, which were considered to foretell the fortunes of the persons in whose possession they were found when the cakes were cut up. The gold ring denoted speedy marriage; the silver penny indicated future wealth; while the thimble infallibly doomed its recipient to be an old maid. The division of Diana’s cake revealed Sir Reginald de Echingham in possession of the ring, evidently to his satisfaction; while Olympias, with the reverse sensation, discovered in her slice both the penny and the thimble. Clarice’s cake proved even more productive of mirth; for the thimble fell to the Countess, while the Earl held up the silver penny, laughingly remarking that he was the last person who ought to have had that, since he had already more of them than he wanted. But the fun came to its apex when the ring was discovered in the hand of Mistress Underdone, who indignantly asserted that if a thousand gold rings were showered upon her from as many cakes they would not induce her to marry again. She thought two husbands were enough for any reasonable woman; and if not, she was too old now for folly of that sort. Sir Lambert sent the company into convulsions of laughter by clasping his hands on this announcement with a look of pretended despair, upon which Mistress Underdone, justly indignant, gave him such a box on the ear that he was occupied in rubbing it for the next ten minutes, thereby increasing the merriment of the rest. Loudest and brightest of all the laughers was Diana. She at least had not broken her heart. Clarice, pale and silent in the corner, where she sat and watched the rest, dimly wondered if Diana had any heart to break.
Note 1. There were two divisions of “damsels” in the household of a mediaeval princess, the domicellae and the domicellae camera. The former, who corresponded to the modern Maids of Honour, were young and unmarried; the latter, the Ladies of the Bedchamber, were always married women. Sufficient notice of this distinction has not been taken by modern writers. Had it so been, the supposition long held of the identity of Philippa Chaucer, domicella camera, with Philippa Pycard, domicella, could scarcely have arisen; nor should we be told that Chaucer’s marriage did not occur until 1369, or later, when we find Philippa in office as Lady of the Bedchamber in 1366.