“Nay, my Lord, say not so, I pray you.” The Prior found his voice at last. “I have learned to recognise my Master’s voice, whether I hear it from the rostrum of the orator or from the lowly hovel of the serf. And it is not the first time that I have heard it in yours.”
The Earl looked up with an expression of surprise, and then shook his head again with a smile.
“Nay, good Father, flatter me not so far.”
He might have added more, but the sound of an iron bar beaten on a wooden board announced the hour of supper. The Earl conversed almost cheerfully with the Prior and his head officers during supper; and Ademar remarked to the Cellarer that he had not for a long while seen his master so like his old self.
The first of October rose clear and bright. At Berkhamsted, the ladies were spending the morning in examining the contents of a pedlar’s well-stocked pack, and buying silk, lawn, furs, and trimmings for the wedding. At Ashridge, the Earl was walking up and down the Priory garden, looking over the dilapidations which time had wrought in his monastery, and noting on his tables sundry items in respect of which he meant to repair the ravages. At Romsey, Mother Margaret, in her black patched habit and up-turned sleeves, was washing out the convent refectory, and thereby, she fervently hoped, washing her sins out of existence—without a thought of the chivalrous love which would have set her high above all such menial labour, and would never have permitted even the winds of heaven to “visit her cheek too roughly.” Did it never occur to her that she might have allowed the Redeemer of men to “make her salvation” for her, and yet have allowed herself to make her husband’s life something better to him than a weary burden?
The day’s work was over, and the recreation time had come. The Prior of Ashridge tapped at the door of the guest-chamber, and was desired to enter.
He found the Earl turning over the leaves of his Psalter.
“Look here, Father,” said the latter, pointing out the fifteenth verse of the ninetieth Psalm.
“We are glad for the days wherein Thou didst humiliate us; the years wherein we have seen evil.”
“What does that mean?” said the Earl. “Is it that we thank God for the afflictions He has given us? It surely does not mean—I hope not—that our comfort is to last just as long as our afflictions have lasted, and not a day longer.”