But it was not there that this sorrow lifted it at first. The human agony had to be lived through before the Divine calm and peace could come to heal it. His last effort had been made in vain. The passionate hope of twenty years, that the day would come when his long, patient love should meet with its reward even on earth, was shattered to the dust. Even if she wished to come back after this, she could never retrace her steps. Compensation he might find in Heaven, but there could be none left for him on earth now. Even hope was dead within him.
The fatal Bull fell from the Earl’s hand, and dropped a dead weight on the rushes at his feet. He was a heart-wrecked man, and life had to go on.
Was this man—for his is no fancy picture—a poor weak creature, or was he a strong, heroic soul? Many will write him down the weakling; perhaps all but those who have themselves known much of that hope deferred which maketh the heart sick, and drains away the moral life-blood drop by drop. It may be that the registers of Heaven held appended to his name a different epithet. It is harder to wait than to work; hardest of all to awake after long suspense to the blank conviction that all has been in vain, and then to take up the cross and meekly follow the Crucified.
Two hours later, a page brought a message to Reginald de Echingham to the effect that he was wanted by his master.
Reginald, in his own eyes, was a thoroughly miserable man. He had nobody to talk with, and nothing to do. He missed Olympias sadly, for as the Earl had once jestingly remarked, she burnt perpetual incense on his altar, and flattery was a necessary of life to Reginald. Olympias was the only person who admired him nearly as much as he did himself. Like the old Romans, partem et circenses constituted his list of indispensables; and had it been inevitable to dispense with one of them for a time, Reginald would have resigned the bread rather than the game. On this particular morning, his basket of grievances was full. The damp had put his moustache out of curl; he had found a poor breakfast provided for him—and Reginald was by no means indifferent to his breakfast—and, worst of all, the mirror was fixed so high up on the wall that he could not see himself comfortably. The usual religious rites of the morning before his own dear image had, therefore, to be very imperfectly performed. Reginald grumbled sorely within himself as he went through the cold stone passages which led to the Earl’s chamber.
His master lifted very sad eyes to his face.
“De Echingham, I wish to set out for Ashridge to-morrow. Can you be ready?”
Ashridge! De Echingham would as soon have received marching orders for Spitzbergen. If there were one place in the world which he hated in his inmost soul, it was that Priory in Buckinghamshire, which Earl Edmund had himself founded. He would be worse off there than even in Bermondsey Palace, with nothing around him but silent walls and almost equally silent monks. De Echingham ventured on remonstrance.
“Would not your Lordship find Berkhamsted much more pleasurable, especially at this season?”
“I do not want pleasure,” answered the Earl wearily. “I want rest.”