But now that the first difficulty was removed, another rose up before me. Would Margaret speak to me? Was she, perhaps, searching for opportunities of mortification, and would refuse the indulgence permitted? I knew as much of the King’s Court, as much of a knightly tournament, as I knew of that sealed-up heart of hers. Should I be allowed to know any more?
“Annora,” said our aunt again, “there is one thine in my life that I regret sorely, and it is that I was not more of a mother to thee when thou earnest as a little child. Of course I was under discipline: but I feel now that I did not search for opportunities as I might have done, that I let little chances pass which I might have seized. My child, forgive me!”
“Dearest Mother!” I said, “you were ever far kinder to me than any one else in all the world.”
“Thank God I have heard that!” saith she. “Ah, children—for we are children to an aged woman like me—life looks different indeed, seen from a deathbed, to what it does viewed from the little mounds of our human wisdom as we pass along it. Here, there is nothing great but God; there is nothing fair save Christ and Heaven; there is nothing else true, nor desirable, nor of import. Every thing is of consequence, if, and just so far as, it bears on these: and all other things are as the dust of the floor, which ye sweep off and forth of the doors into the outward. Life is the way upward to God, or the way down to Satan. What does it matter whether the road were smooth or rough, when ye come to the end thereof? The more weary and footsore, the more chilled and hungered ye are, the sweeter shall be the marriage-supper and the rest of the Father’s House.”
“Ay—when we are there.” It was Margaret who spoke.
“And before, let us look forward, my child.”
“Easy enough,” said Margaret, “when the sun gleameth out fair, and ye see the domes of the city stand up bravely afore. But in the dark night, when neither sun nor star appeareth, and ye are out on a wild moor, and thick mist closeth you in, so that ye go it may be around thinking it be forward, till ye know not whether your face is toward the city or no—”
“Let thy face be toward the Lord of the city,” said Mother Alianora. “He shall lead thee forth by the right way, that thou mayest come to His city and to His holy hill. The right way, daughter, is sometimes the way over the moor, and through the mist. ‘Who of you walketh in darkness, and there is no light to him? Let him trust in the name of the Lord, and lean upon his God.’ Why, my child, it is only when man cannot see that it is possible for him to trust. Faith is not called in exercise so long as thou walkest by sight.”
“But when thou art utterly alone,” said my sister in a low voice, “with not one footstep on the road beside thee—”
“That art thou never, child, so thou be Christ’s. His footsteps are alway there.”