Chapter Twelve.
What is Love?
“She only said, ‘My life is dreary,
He cometh not,’ she said:
She said, ‘I am aweary, weary,
I would that I were dead!’”
Tennyson.
It was fortunate for Bruno de Malpas that he had a friend in Bishop Grosteste, whose large heart and clear brain were readily interested in his wish to return from regular to secular orders. He smoothed the path considerably, and promised him a benefice in his diocese if the dispensation could be obtained. But the last was a lengthy process, and some months passed away before the answer could be received from Rome.
It greatly scandalised Hawise and Eva—for different reasons—to see how very little progress was made by Beatrice in that which in their eyes was the Christian religion. It was a comfort to them to reflect that she had been baptised as an infant, and therefore in the event of sudden death had a chance of going to Heaven, instead of the dreadful certainty of being shut up in Limbo,—a place of vague locality and vaguer character, being neither pleasant nor painful, but inhabited by all the hapless innocents whose heathen or careless Christian parents suffered them to die unregenerated. But both of them were sorely shocked to discover, when she had been about two months at Bury, that poor Beatrice was still ignorant of the five commandments of the Church. Nor was this all: she irreverently persisted in her old inquiry of “What is the Church?” and sturdily demanded what right the Church had to give commandments.
Hawise was quite distressed. It was not proper,—a phrase which, with her, was the strongest denunciation that could be uttered. Nobody had ever asked such questions before: ergo, they ought never to be asked. Every sane person knew perfectly well what the Church was (though, when gently urged by Beatrice, Hawise backed out of any definition), and no good Catholic could possibly require telling. And as to so shocking a supposition as that the Church had no right to issue her own commands,—well, it was not proper!
Eva’s objection was quite as strong, but of a different sort. She really could not understand what Beatrice wanted. If the priest—or the Church—they were very much the same thing—told her what to do, could she not rest and be thankful? It was a great deal less trouble than everlastingly thinking for one’s self.
“No one of any note ever thinks for himself,” chimed in Hawise.
“Then I am glad I am not of any note!” bluntly responded Beatrice.
“You a De Malpas! I am quite shocked!” said Hawise.
“God made me with a heart and a conscience,” was the answer. “If He had not meant me to use them, He would not have given them to me.”
At that point Beatrice left the room in answer to a call from the Countess; and Hawise, turning to her companions, remarked in a whisper that it must be that dreadful Jewish blood on the mother’s side which had given her such very improper notions. They were so low! “For my part,” she added, “if it were proper to say so, I should remark that I cannot imagine why Father Bruno does not see that she understands something of Christianity—but of course one must not criticise a priest.”
“Speak truth, my daughter,” said a voice from the doorway which rather disconcerted Hawise. “Thou canst not understand my actions—in what respect?”
“I humbly crave your pardon, Father; but I am really distressed about Beatrice.”
“Indeed!—how so?”
“She understands nothing about Christian duties.”
“I hope that is a little more than truth. But if not,—let her understand Christ first, my child: Christian duties will come after.”
“Forgive me, Father—without teaching?”
“Not without His teaching,” said Bruno, gravely. “Without mine, it may be.”
“But, Father, she does not know the five commandments of holy Church. Nay, she asks what ‘the Church’ means.”
“If she be in the Church, she can wait to know it. Thy garments will not keep thee less warm because thou hast never learned how to weave them.”
Hawise did not reply, but she looked unconvinced.
A few days after this, Eva was pleased to inform Beatrice that she had been so happy as to reach that point which in her eyes was the apex of feminine ambition.
“I am betrothed to Sir William de Cantilupe.”
Margaret sighed.
“Dost thou like him?” asked Beatrice, in her straightforward way, which was sometimes a shade too blunt, and was apt to betray her into asking direct questions which it might have been kinder and more delicate to leave unasked.
Eva blushed and simpered.
“I’ll tell thee, Beatrice,” said little Marie, dancing up. “She’s over head and ears in love—so much over head,”—and Marie’s hand went as high as it would go above her own: “but it’s my belief she has tumbled in on the wrong side.”
“‘The wrong side’!” answered Beatrice, laughing. “The wrong side of love? or the wrong side of Eva?”
“The wrong side of Eva,” responded Marie, with a positive little nod. “As to love, I’m not quite sure that she knows much about it: for I don’t believe she cares half so much for Sir William as she cares for being married. That’s the grand thing with her, so far as I can make out. And that’s not my notion of love.”
“Thou silly little child of twelve, what dost thou know about it?” contemptuously demanded Eva. “Thy time is not come.”
“No, and I hope it won’t,” said Marie, “if I’m to make such a goose of myself over it as thou dost.”
“Marie, Marie!”
“It’s true, Margaret!—Now, Beatrice, dost thou not think so? She makes a regular misery of it. There is no living with her for a day or two before he comes to see her. She never gives him a minute’s peace when he is here; and if he looks at somebody else, she goes as black as a thunder-cloud. If he’s half an hour late, she’s quite sure he is visiting some other gentlewoman, whom he loves better than he loves her. She’s for ever making little bits of misery out of nothing. If he were to call her ‘honey-sweet Eva’ to-day, and only ‘sweet Eva’ to-morrow, she would be positive there was some shocking reason for it, instead of, like a sensible girl, never thinking about it in that way at all.”
Beatrice and Doucebelle were both laughing, and even Margaret joined in a little.
“Of course,” said Marie by way of postscript, “if Sir William had been badly hurt in a tournament, or anything of that sort, I could understand her worrying about it: or if he had told her that he did not love her, I could understand that: but she worries for nothing at all! If he does not tell her that he loves her every time he comes, she fancies he doesn’t.”
“Marie, don’t be so silly!”
“Thanks, I’ll try not,” said Marie keenly. “And she calls that love! What dost thou think, Beatrice?”
“Why, I think it does not sound much like it, Marie—in thy description.”
“Why, what notion of love hast thou?” said Eva scornfully. “I have not forgotten how thou wert wont to talk of thy betrothed.”
“But I never professed to love Leo,” said Beatrice, looking up. “How could I, when I had not seen him?”
“Dost thou want to see, in order to love?” sentimentally inquired Eva.
“No,” answered Beatrice, thoughtfully. “But I want to know. I might easily love some one whom I had not seen with my eyes, if he were always sending me messages and doing kind actions for me: but I could not love somebody who was to me a mere name, and nothing more.”
“It is plain thou hast no sensitiveness, Beatrice.”
“I’d rather have sense,—wouldn’t you?” said little Marie.
“As if one could not have both!” sneered Eva.
“Well, if one could, I should have thought thou wouldst,” retorted Marie.
“Well! I don’t understand you!” said Eva. “I cannot care to be loved with less than the whole heart. I should not thank you for just the love that you can spare from other people.”
“But should not one have some to spare for other people?” suggested Marie.
“That sounds as if one’s heart were a box,” said Beatrice, “that would hold so much and no more. Is it not more like a fountain, that can give out perpetually and always have fresh supplies within?”
“Yes, for the beloved one,” replied Eva, warmly.
“For all,” answered Beatrice. “That is a narrow heart which will hold but one person.”
“Well, I would rather be loved with the whole of a narrow heart than with a piece of a broad one.”
“O Eva!”
“What dost thou mean, Doucebelle?” said Eva, sharply, turning on her new assailant. “Indeed I would! The man who loves me must love me supremely—must care for nothing but me: must find his sweetest reward for every thing in my smile, and his bitterest pain in my displeasure. That is what I call love.”
“Well! I should call that something else—if Margaret wouldn’t scold,” murmured Marie in an undertone.
“What is that, Marie?” asked Margaret, with a smile.
“Self-conceit; and plenty of it,” said the child.
“Ask Father Bruno what he thinks, Beatrice,” suggested Margaret, after a gentle “Hush!” to the somewhat too plain-spoken Marie. “Thou canst do it, but it would not come so well from us.”
“Dost thou mean to say I am conceited, little piece of impertinence?” inquired Eva, in no dulcet tones.
“Well, I thought thou saidst it thyself,” was the response, for which Marie got chased round the room with the wooden side of an embroidery frame, and, being lithe as a monkey, escaped by flying to the Countess’s rooms, which communicated with those of her daughter by a private staircase.
Father Bruno came up, as he often did, the same evening: but before Beatrice had time to consult him, the small Countess of Eu appeared from nowhere in particular, and put the crucial question in its crudest form.
“Please, Father Bruno, what is love?”
“Dost thou want telling?” inquired Bruno with evident amusement.
“Please, we all want telling, because we can’t agree.”
Bruno very rarely laughed, but he did now.
“Then, if you cannot agree, you certainly do need it. I should rather like to hear the various opinions.”
“Oh! Eva says—” began the child eagerly; but Bruno’s hand, laid gently on her head, stopped her.
“Wait, my child. Let each speak for herself.”
There was silence for a moment, for no one liked to begin—except Marie, whom decorum alone kept silent.
“What didst thou say, Eva?”
“I believe I said, good Father, that I cared not for the love of any that did not hold me first and best. Nor do I.”
“‘Love seeketh not her own,’” said Bruno. “That which seeks its own is not love.”
“What is it, Father?” modestly asked Doucebelle.
“It is self-love, my daughter; the worst enemy that can be to the true love of God and man. Real love is unselfish, unexacting, and immortal.”
“But love can die, surely!”
“Saint Paul says the contrary, my daughter.”
“It can kill, I suppose,” said Margaret, in a low tone.
“Yes, the weak,” replied Bruno.
“But, Father, was the holy Apostle not speaking of religious love?” suggested Eva, trying to find a loophole.
“What is the alternative,—irreligious love? I do not know of such a thing, my daughter.”
“But there is a wicked sort of love.”
“Certainly not. There are wicked passions. But love can never be wicked, because God is love.”
“But people can love wickedly?” asked Eva, looking puzzled.
“I fail to see how any one can love wickedly. Self-love is always wicked.”
“Then, Father, if it be wicked, you call it self-love?” said Eva, leaping (very cleverly, as she thought) to a conclusion.
“Scarcely,” said Bruno, with a quiet smile. “Say rather, my daughter, that if it be self-love, I call it wicked.”
The perplexed expression returned to Eva’s face.
“My child, what is love?”
“Why, Father, that is just what we want to know,” said Marie.
But Bruno waited for Eva’s answer.
“I suppose,” she said nervously, “it means liking a person, and wishing for his company, and wanting him to love one.”
“And I suppose that it is caring for him so much that thou wouldst count nothing too great a sacrifice, to attain his highest good. That is how God loved us, my children.”
Eva thought this extremely poor and tame, beside her own lovely ideal.
“Then,” said Marie, “if I love Margaret, I shall want her to be happy. I shall not want her to make me happy, unless it would make her so.”
“Right, my child,” said Bruno, with a smile of approbation. “To do otherwise would be loving Marie, not Margaret.”
“But, Father!” exclaimed Eva. “Do you mean to say that if my betrothed prefers to go hawking rather than sit with me, if I love him I shall wish him to leave me?”
“Whom wouldst thou be loving, if not?”
“I could not wish him to go and leave me!”
“My child, there is a divine self-abnegation to which very few attain. But those few come nearest to the imitation of Him who ‘pleased not Himself,’ and I think—God knoweth—often they are the happiest. Let us all ask God for grace to reach it. ‘This is My commandment, that ye have love one to another.’”
And, as was generally the case when he had said all he thought necessary at the moment, Bruno rose, and with a benediction quitted the room.
“Call that loving!” said Eva, contemptuously, when he was gone. “Poor tame stuff! I should not thank you for it.”
“Well, I should,” said Doucebelle, quietly.
“Oh, thou!” was Eva’s answer, in the same tone. “Why, thou hast no heart to begin with.”
Doucebelle silently doubted that statement.
“O Eva, for shame!” said Marie. “Doucebelle always does what every body wants her, unless she thinks it is wrong.”
“Thou dost not call that love, I hope?”
“I think it is quite as like it as wishing people to do what they don’t want, to please you,” said Marie, sturdily.
“I don’t believe one of you knows any thing about it,” loftily returned Eva. “If I had been Margaret, now, I could not have sat quietly to that broidery. I could not have borne it!”
Margaret looked up quickly, changed colour, and with a slight compression of her lower lip, went back to her work in silence.
“But what wouldst thou have done, Eva?” demanded the practical little Marie. “Wouldst thou have stared out of the window all day long?”
“No!” returned Eva with fervent emphasis. “I should have wept my life away. But Margaret is not like me. She can get interested in work and other things, and forget a hapless love, and outlive it. It would kill me in a month.”
Margaret rose very quietly, put her frame by in the corner, and left the room. Beatrice, who had been silent for some time, looked up then with expressive eyes.
“It is killing her, Eva. My father told me so a week since. He says he is quite sure that the Countess is mistaken in fancying that she is getting over it.”
“She! She is as strong as a horse. And I don’t think she ever felt it much! Not as I should have done. I should have taken the veil that very day. Earth would have been a dreary waste to me from that instant. I could not have borne to see a man again. However many years I might have lived, no sound but the Miserere—”
“But, Eva! I thought thou wert going to die in a month.”
“It is very rude to interrupt, Marie. No sound but the Miserere would ever have broken the chill echoes of my lonely cell, nor should any raiment softer than sackcloth have come near my seared and blighted heart!”
“I should think it would get seared, with nothing but sackcloth,” put in the irrepressible little Lady of Eu.
“But what good would all that do, Eva?”
“Good, Beatrice! What canst thou mean? I tell thee, I could not have borne any thing else.”
“I don’t believe much in thy sackcloth, Eva. Thou wert making ever such a fuss the other day because the serge of thy gown touched thy neck and rubbed it, and Levina ran a ribbon down to keep it off thee.”
“Don’t be impertinent, Marie. Of course, in such a case as that, I could not think of mere inconveniences.”
“Well, if I could not think of inconveniences when I was miserable, I would try to make less fuss over them when I was happy.”
“I am not happy, foolish child.”
“Why, what’s the matter? Did Sir William look at thee only twenty-nine times, instead of thirty, when he was here?”
“Thou art the silliest maiden of whom any one ever heard!”
“No, Eva; her match might be found, I think,” said Beatrice.
Marie went off into convulsions of laughter, and flung herself on the rushes to enjoy it with more freedom.
“I wonder which of you two is the funnier!” said she.
“What on earth is there comical about me?” exclaimed Eva, the more put out because Beatrice and Doucebelle were both joining in Marie’s amusement.
“It is of no use to tell thee, Eva,” replied Beatrice; “thou wouldst not be able to see it.”
“Can’t I see any thing you can?” demanded Eva, irritably.
“Why, no!” said Marie, with a fresh burst: “canst thou see thine own face?”
“What a silly child, to make such a speech as that!”
“No, Eva,” said Beatrice, trying to stifle her laughter, increased by Marie’s witticism: “the child is any thing but silly.”
“Well, I think you are all very silly, and I shall not talk to you any more,” retorted Eva, endeavouring to cover her retreat; but she was answered only by a third explosion from Marie.
Half an hour later, the Countess, entering her bed-chamber, was startled to find a girl crouched down by the side of the bed, her face hidden in the coverlet, and her sunny cedar hair flowing over it in disorder.
“Why, what—Magot! my darling Magot! what aileth thee, my white dove?”
Margaret lifted her head when her mother spoke. She had not been shedding tears. Perhaps she might have looked less terribly wan and woeful if she had done so.
“Pardon me, Lady! I came here to be alone.”
The Countess sat down in the low curule chair beside her bed, and drew her daughter close. Margaret laid her head, with a weary sigh, on her mother’s knee, and cowered down again at her feet.
“And what made thee wish to be alone, my rosebud?”
“Something that somebody said.”
“Has any one been speaking unkindly to my little one?”
“No, no. They did not mean to be unkind. Oh dear no! nothing of the sort. But—things sting—when people do not mean it.”
The Countess softly stroked the cedar hair. She hardly understood the explanation. Things of that sort did not sting her. But this she understood and felt full sympathy with—that her one cherished darling was in trouble.
“Who was it, Magot?”
“Do not ask me, Lady. I did not mean to complain of any one. And nobody intended to hurt me.”
“What did she say?”
“She said,”—something like a sob came here—“that I was one who could settle to work, and get interested in other things, and forget a lost love. But, she said, it would kill her in a month.”
“Well, darling? I began to hope that was true.”
“No,” came in a very low voice. It was not a quick, warm denial like that of Eva, yet one which sounded far more hopelessly conclusive. “No. O Mother, no!”
“And thou art still fretting in secret, my dove?”
“I do not know about fretting. I think that is too energetic a word. It would be better to say—dying.”
“Magot, mine own, my sunbeam! Do not use such words!”
“It is better to see the truth, Lady. And that is true. But I do not think it will be over in a month.”
The Countess could not trust herself to speak. She went on stroking the soft hair.
“Father Bruno says that love can kill weak people. I suppose I am weak. I feel as if I should be glad when it is all done with.”
“When what is done with?” asked the Countess, in a husky tone.
“Living,” said the girl. “This weary round of dressing, eating, working, talking, and sleeping. When it is all done, and one may lie down to sleep and not wake to-morrow,—I feel as if that were the only thing which would ever make me glad any more.”
“My heart! Dost thou want to leave me?”
“I would have lived, Lady, for your sake, if I could have done. But I cannot. The rosebud that you loved is faded: it cannot give out scent any more. It is not me,—me, your Margaret—that works, and talks, and does all these things. It is only my body, which cannot die quite so fast as my soul. My heart is dead already.”
“My treasure! I will have Master Aristoteles to see to thee. I really hoped thou wert getting over it.”
“It is of no use trying to keep me,” she answered quietly. “You had better let me go—Mother.”
The Countess’s reply was to clap her hands—at that time the usual method of summoning a servant. When Levina tapped at the door, instead of bidding her enter, her mistress spoke through it.
“Tell Master Aristoteles that I would speak with him in this chamber.”
The mother and daughter were both very still until the shuffling of the physician’s slippered feet was heard in the passage. Then the Countess roused herself and answered the appeal with “Come in.”
“My Lady desired my attendance?”
“I did, Master. I would fain have you examine this child. She has a strange fancy, which I should like to have uprooted from her mind. She imagines that she is going to die.”
“A strange fancy indeed, if it please my Lady. I see no sign of disease at all about the damsel. A little weakness, and low spirits,—no real complaint whatever. She might with some advantage wear the fleminum (Note 1),—the blood seems a little too much in the head: and warm fomentations would help to restore her strength. Almond blossoms, pounded with pearl, might also do something. But, if it please my Lady—let my Lady speak.”
“I was only going to ask, Master, whether viper broth would be good for her?”
“A most excellent suggestion, my Lady. But, I was about to remark, the physician of Saint Albans hath given me a most precious thing, which would infallibly restore the damsel, even if she were at the gates of death. Three hairs of the beard of the blessed Dominic (Note 2), whom our holy Father hath but now canonised. If the damsel were to take one of these, fasting, in holy water, no influence of the Devil could have any longer power over her.”
“Ha, jolife!” cried the Countess, clasping her hands. “Magot, my love, this is the very thing. Thou must take it.”
“I will take what you command, Lady.”
But there was no enthusiasm in Margaret’s voice.
“Then to-morrow morning, Master, do, I beseech you, administer this precious cordial!”
“Lady, I will do so. But it would increase the efficacy, if the damsel would devoutly repeat this evening the Rosary of the holy Virgin, with twelve Glorias and one hundred Aves.”
“Get thee to it, quickly, Magot, my darling, and I will say them with thee, which will surely be of still more benefit Master, I thank you inexpressibly!”
And hastily rising, the Countess repaired to her oratory, whither Margaret followed her. Father Warner was there already, and he joined in the prayers, which made them of infallible efficacy in the eyes of the Countess.
At five o’clock the next morning, in the oratory, the holy hair was duly administered to the patient. All the priests were present except Bruno. Master Aristoteles himself, after high mass, came forward with the blessed relic,—a long, thick, black hair, immersed in holy water, in a golden goblet set with pearls. This Margaret obediently swallowed (of course exclusive of the goblet); and it is not very surprising that a fit of coughing succeeded the process.
“Avaunt thee, Satanas!” said Father Warner, making the sign of the cross in the air above Margaret’s head.
Father Nicholas kindly suggested that a little more of the holy water might be efficacious against the manifest enmity of the foul Fiend. Master Aristoteles readily assented; and the additional dose calmed the cough: but probably it did not occur to any one to think whether unholy water would not have done quite as well.
When they had come out into the bower, the Countess took her daughter in her arms, and kissed her brow.
“Now, my Magot,” said she playfully—it was not much forced, for her faith was great in the blessed hair—“now, my Magot, thou wilt get well again. Thou must!”
Margaret looked up into the loving face above her, and a faint, sad smile flitted across her lips.
“Think so, dear Lady, if it comfort thee,” she said. “It will not be for long!”
Note 1. A garment which was supposed to draw the blood downwards from the brain.
Note 2. “Hairs of a saint’s beard, dipped in holy water, and taken inwardly,” are given by Fosbroke (Encyclopaedia of Antiquities, page 479) in his list of medieval remedies.