When Philippa was lying awake that night, her thoughts were troublous ones. Not only did she very much doubt Sir Richard’s consent to her mother’s visit to Kilquyt; but another question was puzzling her exceedingly. How far was it desirable to inform Isabel of the death of Alianora? She had noticed how the unfortunate remark of the Abbess had agitated her mother; and she also observed that when Joan came to speak to Isabel herself, she was totally silent concerning Earl Richard. The uncomplimentary adjectives which she had not spared in speaking to Philippa were utterly discarded now. Would it not do at least as much harm as good to revive the old memories of pain by telling her this? Philippa decided to remain silent.
The summer was passing away, and the autumn hues were slowly creeping over the forest, when Sir Richard’s answer arrived at Shaftesbury. It was not a pleasing missive; but it would have cost Philippa more tears if it had made her less angry. That gentleman had not written in a good temper; but he was not without excuse, for he had suffered something himself. He had not dared to reply to Philippa’s entreaty, without seeking in his turn the permission of the Earl of Arundel, in whose hands his fortune lay to make or mar. And, by one of those uncomfortable coincidences which have led to the proverb that “Misfortunes never come single,” it so happened that the news of the Countess’s death had reached the Earl on the very morning whereon Sir Richard laid Philippa’s letter before him. The result was that there broke on the devoted head of Sir Richard a tempest of ungovernable rage, so extremely unpleasant in character that he might be excused for his anxiety to avoid provoking a second edition of it. The Earl was grieved—so far as a nature like his could entertain grief—to lose his second wife; but to find that the first wife had been discovered, and by her daughter, possessed the additional character of insult. That the occurrence was accidental did not alter matters. Words would not content the aggrieved mourner: his hand sought the hilt of his sword, and Sir Richard, thinking discretion the better part of valour, made his way, as quickly as the laws of matter and space allowed him, out of the terrible presence whereinto he had rashly ventured. Feeling himself wholly innocent of any provocation, it was not surprising that he should proceed to dictate a letter to his wife, scarcely calculated to gratify her feelings. Thus ran the offending document:—
“Dame,—Your epistle hath reached mine hands, (see Note 2) wherein it hath pleased you to give me to know of your finding of the Lady Isabel La Despenser, your fair mother, (see Note 3) and likewise of your desire that she should visit you at my Manor of Kilquyt. Know therefore, that I can in no wise assent to the same. For I am assured that it should provoke, and that in no small degree, the wrath of your fair father, my gracious Lord of Arundel: and I hereby charge you, on your obedience, so soon as you shall receive this my letter, that you return home, and tarry no longer at Shaftesbury nor Sempringham. Know that I fare reasonably well, and Eustace my squire; and your fair father likewise, saving that he hath showed much anger towards you and me. And thus, praying God and our blessed Lady, and Saint Peter and Saint Paul, to keep you. I rest.
“R. Sergeaux.”
The entire epistle was written by a scribe, for Sir Richard was as innocent of the art of calligraphy as Philippa herself; and the appending of his seal was the only part of the letter achieved by his own hand.
Philippa read the note three times before she communicated its contents to any one. The first time, it was with feelings of bitter anger towards both her father and her husband; the second, her view of her father’s conduct remained unchanged, but she began to see that Sir Richard, from his own point of view, was not without reasonable excuse for his refusal, and that considering the annoyance he had himself suffered, his letter was moderate and even tolerably kind,—kind, that is, for him. After the third perusal, Philippa carried the letter to Joan, and read it to her—not in Isabel’s presence.
“What a fool wert thou, child,” said Joan, with her usual bluntness, “to send to thy lord concerning this matter! Well, what is done, is done. I had looked for no better had I known of it.”
Philippa did not read the letter to her mother. She merely told her the substance; that Sir Richard would not permit her to receive her at Kilquyt, and that he had ordered her home without delay. Isabel’s lip quivered a moment, but the next instant she smiled.
“I am not surprised, my child,” she said. “Take heed, and obey.” It was hard work to obey. Hard, to part with Joan; harder yet, to leave Isabel in her lonely cell at Sempringham, and to go forward on the as lonely journey to Kilquyt. Perhaps hardest of all was the last night in the recreation-room at Sempringham. Isabel and Philippa sat by themselves in a corner, the hand of the eremitess clasped in that of her daughter.
“But how do you account for all the sorrow that is in the world?” Philippa had been saying. “Take my life, for instance, or your own, mother. God could have given us very pleasant lives, if it had pleased Him; why did He not do so? How can it augur love, to take out of our way all things loved or loving?”
“My daughter,” answered Isabel, “I am assured—and the longer I live the more assured I am—that the way which God marketh out for each one of His chosen is the right way, the best way, and for that one the only way. Every pang given to us, if we be Christ’s, is a pang that could not be spared. ‘As He was, so are we in this world;’ and with us, as with Him, ‘thus it must be.’ All our Lord’s followers wear His crown of thorns; but theirs, under His loving hand, bud and flower; which His never did, till He could cry upon the rood, ‘It is finished.’”