“Father!” she whispered, “have you promised him?”
“I have, my child,” he answered, softly.
She rose suddenly, and quickly turned to go up the stairs leading to her own room. At this moment Richard Pynson rose also, and quietly taking up the book, which had fallen from Margery’s lap on the floor, he handed it to her. She took it with one hand, and gave him the other, but did not let him see her face. Then she passed into her chamber, and they heard her fasten the door.
When she had done so, she flung herself down on the rushes (note 1), and bent her head forward on her knees. The longer she thought over her prospects, the more dreary and doleful they appeared. Her state of mind was one that has been touchingly described by a writer who lived three hundred years later—“Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother”—who, of all who have attempted and failed in the impossible task of rendering the Psalms into verse, perhaps approached as near success as any one.
“Troublous seas doe mee surrownde;
Saue, O Lord, my sinking soule,
Sinking wheare it feeles no grownde,
In this gulf, this whirling hole;
Wayghting ayde with earnest eying,
Calling God with bootles crying;
Dymme and drye in mee are fownde
Eyes to see, and throat to sounde.”
Suddenly, as she sat thus bowed down, too sorrowful for tears, like the dew to a parched flower came the words of the book—nay, the words of the Lord—into her soul.
“Be not your herte afrayed, ne drede it.”
“And therfore ghe han now sorowe, but eftsoone I schal se ghou, and ghoure herte schal haue ioie, and no man schal take fro ghou ghoure ioie. Treuly, treuly, I seie to ghou, if ghe axen the Fadir ony thing in my name he schal ghyue to ghou.” John xvi. 22, 23.
Now, Margery had neither teacher nor commentary to interpret to her the words of Scripture; and the result was, that she never dreamed of modifying any of them, but took the words simply and literally. It never entered her head to interpret them with any qualification—to argue that “anything” must mean only some things. Ah! how much better would it be for us, if we would accept those blessed words as plainly, as unconditionally, as conclusively, as this poor untaught girl!
But when Margery considered the question more minutely, poor child! she knew not what to ask. The constant reference of everything by the Lord Jesus to “the will of the Father” had struck her forcibly; and now she dared not ask for entire freedom from the crashing blow which had fallen on her, lest it should not be the will of the Father. So she contented herself with a supplication which, under the circumstances, was the best she could have offered. She did not even try to form her petitions into words—the depths in which her soul lay were too deep for that; it was a wordless cry which went up to God. But its substance was an entreaty that the Father would do His will, and would bend her will to it; that whatever He saw fit to give her, He would always give His presence and His love; that whatever He was pleased to take away, He would not take from her the word unto His handmaid wherein He had caused her to hope. And when she rose from her knees, the prominent idea in her mind might have been expressed in the words of the old proverb, “He loseth nothing that keepeth God for his friend.”