And when the helm was unlaced, and the archer had recognised the dead face, they knew that the Lollard squire, Hugh Calverley, had saved the life of the persecutor at the cost of his own.
He had spoken the simple truth. He could not fight, but he could die. He could not write his name upon the world’s roll of glory, but he could do God’s will.
The public opinion of earth accounts this a mean and unworthy object. The public opinion of Heaven is probably of a different character.
Nothing was to be done for widow or child, for Hugh Calverley left neither. He was no ascetic; he was merely a man who thought first of how he might please the Lord, and who felt himself least fettered by single life. So there was no love in his heart but the love of Christ, and nothing on earth that he desired in comparison of Him.
And on earth he had no guerdon. Even the royal words of praise he did not live to hear. But on the other side of the dark river passed so quickly, there were the garland of honour, and the palm of victory, and the King’s “Well done, good and faithful servant!” Verily, also, he had his reward.
The autumn was passing into winter before the news reached Constance either of the battle of Agincourt or of the murder on Southampton Green. At first she was utterly crushed and prostrated. The old legal leaven, so hard to work out of the human conscience, wrought upon her with tenfold force, and she declared that God was against her, and was wreaking His wrath upon her for the lie which she had told in denying the validity of her marriage. Was it not evidently so? she asked. Had He not first bereft her of her darling, the precious boy whom her sin had preserved to her? And now not only Edward, but the favourite brother, Dickon, were gone likewise. Herself, her stepmother, her widowed sisters-in-law (Note 1), and the two little children of Richard, were alone left of the House of York. The news of Edward’s death she bore with comparative equanimity: it was the sudden and dreadful end of Richard which so completely overpowered her.
“Hold thy peace, Maude!” she said mournfully, in answer to Maude’s tender efforts to console her. “God is against me and all mine House. We have sinned; or rather, I have sinned,—and have thus brought down sorrow and mourning upon the hearts that were dearest to me. I owe a debt; and it must needs be paid, even to the uttermost farthing.”
“But, dear my Lady,” urged Maude, not holding her peace as requested,—“what do you, to pay so much as one farthing of that debt? Christ our Lord hath taken the same upon Him. A debt cannot be twice paid.”
“I do verily trust,” she said humbly, “that He hath paid for me the debt eternal; yet is there a debt earthly, and this is for my paying.”