And so Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, passed away.
Two months later,—by a scribe’s letter, written in the name of her half-brother, the young, brave, joyous man upon whose head the old coronet had descended,—the news of the Earl’s death reached Philippa Sergeaux at Kilquyt. Very differently it affected her from the manner in which she would have received it four years before. And very differently from the manner in which it was received by the daughters of Alianora, to whom (though they did not put it into audible words) the real thought of the heart was—“Is the old man really gone at last? Well, it was time he should. Now I shall receive the coronet he left to me, and the two, or three, thousand marks.” For thus he had remembered Joan and Alesia; and thus they remembered him. To Mary he left nothing; a sure sign of offence, but how incurred history remains silent. But to the eldest daughter, whose name was equally unnamed with hers—whose ears heard the news so far away—whose head had never known the fall of his hand in blessing—whose cheek had never been touched by loving lips of his—to Philippa Sergeaux the black serge for which she exchanged her damask robes was real mourning.
She did not say now, “I can never forgive my father.” It is not when we are lying low in the dust before the feet of the Great King, oppressed with the intolerable burden of our ten thousand talents, that we feel disposed to rise and take our fellow-servant by the throat, with the pitiless, “Pay me that thou owest.” The offensive “Stand by,—I am holier than thou!” falls only from unholy lips. When the woman that was a sinner went out, washed and forgiven, from that sinless Presence, with the shards of the broken alabaster box in her hand, she was less likely than at any previous time in her life to reproach the fellow-sinners whom she met on her journey home. So, when Philippa Sergeaux’s eyes were opened, and she came to see how much God had forgiven her, the little that she had to forgive her father seemed less than nothing in comparison. She could distinguish now, as previously she could not—but as God does always—between the sin and the sinner; she was able to keep her hatred and loathing for the first, and to regard the second with the deepest pity. And when she thought of the sleep into which she could have little doubt that his soul had been lulled,—of the black awakening “on the brink of the pit,”—there was no room in her heart for any feeling but that of unutterable anguish.
They had not sent for her to Arundel. Until she heard that the end was reached, she never knew he was near the end at all.
It is not Christianity, but Pharisaism, which would shut up the kingdom of heaven against all but itself. To those who have tasted that the Lord is gracious, it is something more than mere privilege to summon him that is athirst to come. “Necessity is upon them—yea, woe is unto them if they preach not the gospel!” Though no Christian is a priest, every Christian must be a preacher. Ay, and that whether he will or not. He may impose silence upon his lips, but his life must be eloquent in spite of himself. And what a terrible thought is this, when we look on our poor, unworthy, miserable lives rendered unto the Lord, for all His benefits toward us! When the world sees us vacillating between right and wrong—questioning how near we may go to the edge of the precipice and yet be safe—can it realise that we believe that right and wrong to be a matter of life and death? Or when it hears us murmuring continually over trifling vexations, can it believe that we honestly think ourselves those to whom it is promised that all shall work for good—that all things are ours—that we are heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ?
O Lord, pardon the iniquities of our holy things! Verily, without Thee we can do nothing.
On the morning that this news reached Kilquyt, an old man in the garb of the Dominican Order was slowly mounting the ascent which led from the Vale of Sempringham. The valley was just waking into spring life. In the trees above his head the thrushes and chaffinches were singing; and just before him, diminished to a mere speck in the boundless blue, a lark poured forth his “flood of delirious music.” The Dominican paused and rested on his staff while he listened.
“Sing, happy birds!” he said, when at length the lark’s song was over, and the bird had come down to earth again. “For you there are no vain regrets over yesterday, no woeful anticipations of to-morrow. But what kind of song can she sing when she hath heard the news I bring her?”
“Father Guy!” said a voice beside him.
It was a child of ten years old who stood in his path—a copy of Elaine four years before.