CHAPTER XXII THE OUTLAWS
Sad and weary were the hours to Osric which intervened between the death and burial of his grandfather. He gazed upon the dear face, where yet the parting look of love seemed to linger. The sense of desolation overwhelmed him—his earthly prospects were shattered, his dreams of ambition ended; but the dead spake not to console him, and the very heavens seemed as brass; his only consolation that he felt his lapse had been forgiven, that the departed one had died loving and blessing him.
The only true consolation in such hour of distress is that afforded by religion, but poor Osric could feel little of this; he had strayed so far from the gentle precepts which had guarded his boyhood: if he believed in religion, it was as when Satan looked into the gates of Paradise from afar. It was not his. He seemed to have renounced his portion and lot in it, to have sold himself to Satan, in the person of Brian Fitz-Count.
Yet, he could not even now hate the Baron, as he ought to have done, according to all regulations laid down for such cases, made and provided, ever since men began to write novels. Let the reader enter into his case impartially. He had never known either paternal or maternal love—the mother, who had perished, was not even a memory; while, on the other hand, the destroyer had adopted him as a son, and been as a father to him, distinguishing him from others by an affection all the more remarkable as coming from a rugged nature, unused to tender emotions. Again, the horror with which we moderns contemplate such a scene as his dead grandfather had described, was far less vivid in one to whom such casualties had been of constant experience, and were regarded as the usual incidents of warfare. Our readers can easily imagine the way in which he would have regarded it before he had fallen under the training of Wallingford Castle.
But it was his own mother, and Brian was her murderer. Ah, if he had but once known the gentle endearment of a fond mother's love, how different would have been his feelings! There would have been no need then to enforce upon him the duty of forsaking the life but yesterday opening so brightly to his eyes, and throwing himself a waif and a stray upon the world of strife.
He walked to and fro in the woods, and thought sometimes of all he was leaving. Sometimes of the terrible fate of her who had borne him. At another moment he felt half inclined to conceal all, and go back to Wallingford, as if nothing had happened; the next he felt he could never again grasp the hand of the destroyer of his kindred.
The hour came for the funeral. The corpse was brought forth on the bier from the hut which had so long sheltered it in life. They used no coffins in those days—it was simply wrapped in the "winding-sheet." He turned back the linen, and gazed upon the still calm face for the last time ere the bearers departed with their burden. Then he burst into a passion of tears, which greatly relieved him: it is they who cannot weep, who suffer most. His grandfather had been father, mother, and all to him, until a very recent period: and the sweet remembrances and associations of boyhood returned for a while.
The solemn burial service of our forefathers was unlike our own—perhaps not so soothing to the mourners, for whom our service seems made; but it bore more immediate reference to the departed: the service was for them. The prayers of the Church followed them, as in all ancient liturgies, into that world beyond the grave, as still members of Christ's mystical body, one with us in the "Communion of Saints."
The procession was in those days commonly formed at the house of the deceased, but as Sexwulf's earthly home was far from the Church, the body was met at the lych gate, as in modern times. First went the cross-bearer, then the mourners, then the priest preceding the bier, around which lighted torches were borne.
Psalms were now solemnly chanted, particularly the De Profundis and the Miserere, and at the close of each the refrain—