CHAPTER XLVI
"HOW SHALL I LET THEE GO?"
Mora passed swiftly into the banqueting hall.
"Hugh," she said, and came to him. "Hugh, my husband, this is our bridal day. Will you take me to our home?"
His eyes, as they met hers, were full of a dumb misery.
Then a fierce light of passion, a look of wild recklessness, flashed into them. He raised his arms, to catch her to him; then let them fall again, glancing to right and left, as if seeking some way of escape.
But, seeing the amazement on her face, he mastered, by a mighty effort, his emotion, and spoke with calmness and careful deliberation.
"Alas, Mora," he said, "it is a hard fate indeed for me on this day, of all days, to be compelled to leave thee. But in the early morn there came a letter which obliges me, without delay, to ride south, in order to settle a matter of extreme importance. I trust not to be gone longer than nine days. You, being safely established in your own home, amongst your own people, I can leave without anxious fears. Moreover, Martin Goodfellow will remain here representing me, and will in all things do your bidding."
"From whom is this letter, Hugh, which takes you from me, on such a day?"
"It is from a man well known to me, dwelling in a city four days' journey from here."
"Why not say at once: 'It is from the Bishop, written from his Palace in the city of Worcester'?"
Hugh frowned.
"How knew you that?" he asked, almost roughly.
"My dear Knight, hearing much champing of horses in my courtyard, I looked down from a casement and saw a lay-brother well known to me, and three other horsemen wearing the Bishop's livery. What can Symon of Worcester have written which takes you from me on this day, of all days?"
"That I cannot tell thee," he made answer. "But he writes, without much detail, of a matter about which I must know fullest details, without loss of time. I have no choice but to ride and see the Bishop, face to face. It is not a question which can be settled by writing nor could it wait the passing to and fro of messengers. Believe me, Mora, it is urgent. Naught but exceeding urgency could force me from thee on this day."
"Has it to do with my flight from the Convent?" she asked.
He bowed his head.
"Will you tell me the matter on your return, Hugh?"
"I know not," he answered, with face averted. "I cannot say." Then with sudden violence: "Oh, my God, Mora, ask me no more! See the Bishop, I must! Speak with him, I must! In nine days at the very most, I will be back with thee. Duty takes me, my belovèd, or I would not go."
Her mind responded instinctively to the word "duty," "Go then, dear Knight," she said. "Settle this business with Symon of Worcester. I have no desire to know its purport. If it concerns my flight from the Convent, surely the Pope's mandate is all-sufficient. But, be it what it may, in the hands of my faithful Knight and of my trusted friend, the Bishop, I may safely leave it. I do but ask that, the work accomplished, you come with all speed back to me."
With a swift movement he dropped on one knee at her feet.
"Send me away with a blessing," he said. "Bless me before I go."
She laid her hands on the bowed head.
"Alas!" she cried, "how shall I let thee go?"
Then, pushing her fingers deeper into his hair and bending over him, with infinite tenderness: "How shall thy wife bless thee?" she whispered.
He caught his breath, as the fragrance of the newly gathered roses at her bosom reached and enveloped him.
"Bless me," he said, hoarsely, "as the Prioress of the White Ladies used to bless her nuns, and the Poor at the Convent gate."
"Dear Heart," she said, and smiled. "That seems so long ago!" Then, as with bent head he still waited, she steadied her voice, lifting her hands from off him; then laid them back upon his head, with reverent and solemn touch. "The Lord bless thee," she said, "and keep thee; and may our blessèd Lady, who hath restored me to thee, bring thee safely back to me again."
At that, Hugh raised his head and looked up into her face, and the misery in his eyes stirred her tenderness as it had never been stirred by the vivid love-light or the soft depths of passion she had heretofore seen in them.
Her lips parted; her breath came quickly. She would have caught him to her bosom; she would have kissed away this unknown sorrow; she would have smothered the pain, in the sweetness of her embrace.
But bending swiftly he lifted the hem of her robe and touched it with his lips; then, rising, turned and left her without a word; without a backward look.
He left her standing there, alone in the banqueting hall. And as she stood listening, with beating heart, to the sound of his voice raised in command; to the quick movements of his horse's hoofs on the paving stones, as he swung into the saddle; to the opening of the gates and the riding forth of the little cavalcade, a change seemed to have come over her. She ceased to feel herself a happy, yielding bride, a traveller in distant lands, after long journeyings, once more at home.
She seemed to be again Prioress of the White Ladies. The calm fingers of the Cloister fastened once more upon her pulsing heart. The dignity of office developed her.
And wherefore?
Was it because, when her lips had bent above him in surrendering tenderness, her husband had chosen to give her the sign of reverent homage accorded to a prioress, rather than the embrace which would have sealed her surrender?
Or was it because he had asked her to bless him as she had been wont to bless the Poor at the Convent gate?
Or was it the unconscious action of his mind upon hers, he being suddenly called to face some difficulty which had arisen, concerning their marriage, or the Bishop's share in her departure from the Nunnery?
The clang of the closing gates sounded in her ears as a knell.
She shivered; then remembered how she had shivered at sound of the turning of the key in the lock of the crypt-way door. How great the change wrought by eight days of love and liberty. She had shuddered then at being irrevocably shut out from the Cloister. She shuddered now because the arrival of a messenger from the Bishop, and something indefinable in Hugh's manner, had caused her to look back.
She stood quite still. None came to seek her. She seemed to have turned to stone.
It was not the first time this looking back had had a petrifying effect upon a woman. She remembered Lot's wife, going forward led by the gentle pressure of an angel's hand, yet looking back the moment that pressure was removed.
She had gone forward, led by the sweet angel of our Lady's gracious message. Why should she look back? Rather would she act upon the sacred precept: "Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before"—this, said the apostle Saint Paul, was the one thing to do. Undoubtedly now it was the one and only thing for her to do; leaving all else which might have to be done, to her husband and to the Bishop.
"This one thing I do," she said aloud; "this one thing I do." And moving forward, in the strength of that resolve, she passed out into the sunshine.
"Do it now!" sang the thrush, in the rowan-tree.