"Aye, and the memory should rest me. But it doth not so. I seem to have sunk beneath all that—down into the great depths where no words can reach me. Only His own voice, when He shall come and lay His hand upon me, and say, 'Arise, and come away.' I reckon I shall be strong enough to rise up then. Now, I only want to lie and wait for it. Frideswide, dost thou know what gladness feels like? It is so long sithence I have felt it, that I can barely remember."
"Yes, Madam, I know it well."
"And I do not, save in flashes," said Lady Anne again in that wistful tone. "I marvel how it will come to me. I suppose it will come."
She spoke as if she thought it hardly possible.
"Madam, saith not the Psalmist, 'Thou hast put gladness in mine heart?' Methinks that is God's gift as much as grace or mercy."
"Then I will ask Him to put it there," she said, with that childlike simplicity which was a part of her character. "Frideswide, methinks it shall be another way of saying to Him, 'Lord, let me die!'"
And Frideswide knew it was so.
"My maid," said the mistress after a moment's pause, "who was it led thee into the ways of God?"
Frideswide could hardly tell. It had always been so, as it seemed to her. She could barely remember her mother; but first her aunt, and then her stepmother, and always her father, had brought her up in the Lollard faith since her world began. But friends, after all, however faithful and loving, can only lead us into the Court of Israel: the Lord of the Temple must draw aside the veil, and admit His priests Himself into the holy place.
"I can tell thee who it was that led me," resumed Lady Anne, "and let it cheer thee, my maid, to do God's work on them that thou hast opportunity to reach. It was one that I cannot in any wise remember—my Lady my grandmother. She was sometime the Lady Anne de Montacute, a daughter of my Lord of Salisbury that died for King Richard at Cirencester: and she bred up first my father, and after, me, in that which she had learned from her father. I cannot recall her face, essay it as I may: but her doctrine abides with me. 'Tis true, I might have minded it less had not my father kept me thereto belike: for the which reason, may-be, it hath alway seemed me that to love him and to love God went together. They were diverse sides of the same medal. I might say that either came of itself, as I learned the other. Once on a time I seemed to come at God through him: and now—I can come at him only through God. And the day when I shall have both, Frideswide, will be the day when I shall know what like it is to feel glad. But, O my God, was there no other way to bring it?—was there no other way!"