“I marvel,” she pursueth, “if there ever were man or woman yet, that could see it as God seeth it. It may be that unto Him all the evil that Blanche hath done—and ’tis an evil with many sides to it—is a lesser thing than the pride and unbelief which will not give her leave to own that she hath done it. And for what others have done—”
All suddenly, her Ladyship brake off, and hiding her face in her kerchief, she brake into such a passion of weeping tears as methought I had scarce seen in any woman aforetime.
“O my God, my God!” she sobbeth through her tears, “how true is it that ‘man knows the beginnings of sin, but who boundeth the issues thereof!’” (Note 2.)
I felt that my Lady’s trouble, the cause whereof was unknown to me, lay far beyond any words, specially of me: and I could but keep respectful silence till she grew calm. When so were, quoth she—
“Dost marvel at my tears, Helen?”
“In no wise, Madam,” said I: “for I reckoned there were some cause for them, beyond my weak sight.”
“Cause!” saith she—“ay, Helen, cause more than thou wist. Dost know that this Leonard Norris—the man that hath wrought all this mischief—and more beside than thou or I can tell—is my brother, of the father’s side?”
“Madam!” cried I in amaze.
“Ay,” saith she sorrowfully: “and that is not all, Helen, by very much. For our father was just such an other: and not only are the sins, but the leanings and temptations of the fathers, visited upon the children. And I thought, Helen, beyond that—of a quiet grave in unconsecrate ground, wherein, now nigh fifty years agone, they laid one that had not sinned against the light like to Blanche Lewthwaite, yet to whom the world was harder than it is like to be to her. She was lawfully wed, Helen, but she stood pledged to convent vows, and the Church cursed her and flung her forth as a loathsome thing. Her life for twelve years thereafter was a daily dying, whereto death came at last as a hope and a mercy. I reckon the angels drew not their white robes aside, lest her soiled feet should brush them as she passed up to the Judgment Bar. And methinks her sentence from the Judge should be no worser than one He gave in the days of His flesh—‘Thy sins be forgiven thee: go in peace.’ The Church cast her out, but not the Cross. There was no room for her in the churchyard: but methinks there was enough in the Sepulchre on Golgotha!”
Oh, but how sorry I felt for this poor soul! and I saw she was one whom her Ladyship had loved well.