Raymond's eyes were closed; his face, with the sunset light lying full upon it, showed very hollow and white and worn. Even in the repose of a profound unconsciousness it wore a look of lofty purpose, together with an expression of purity and devotion impossible to describe. Gaston and the Prior both turned to look as Father Paul bent over the prostrate figure with an inarticulate exclamation such as he seldom uttered, and Gaston felt a sudden thrill of cold fear run through him.
"He is not dead?" he asked, in a passionate whisper; and the Father looked up to answer:
"Nay, Sir Knight, he is not dead. A little rest, a little tendance, a little of our care, and he will be restored to the world again. Better perhaps were it not so - better perchance for him. For his is not the nature to battle with impunity against the evil of the world. Look at him as he lies there: is that face of one that can look upon the deeds of these vile days and not suffer keenest pain? To fight and to vanquish is thy lot, young warrior; but what is his? To tread the thornier path of life and win the hero's crown, not by deeds of glory and renown, but by that higher and holier path of suffering and renunciation which One chose that we might know He had been there before us. Thou mayest live to be one of this world's heroes, boy; but in the world to come it will be thy brother who will wear the victor's crown."
"I truly believe it," answered Gaston, drawing a deep breath; "but yet we cannot spare him from this world. I give him into thy hands, my Father, that thou mayest save him for us here."
[CHAPTER XXVII.] PETER SANGHURST'S WOOING.
"Joan -- sweetest mistress -- at last I find you; at last my eyes behold again those peerless charms for which they have pined and hungered so long! Tell me, have you no sweet word of welcome for him whose heart you hold between those fair hands, to do with it what you will?"
Joan, roused from her reverie by those smoothly-spoken words, uttered in a harsh and grating voice, turned quickly round to find herself face to face with Peter Sanghurst -- the man she had fondly hoped had passed out of her life for ever.
Joan and her father, after a considerable period spent in wanderings in foreign lands (during which Sir Hugh had quite overcome the melancholy and sense of panic into which he had been thrown by the scourge of the Black Death and his wife's sudden demise as one of its victims), had at length returned to Woodcrych. The remembrance of the plague was fast dying out from men's minds. The land was again under cultivation; and although labour was still scarce and dear, and continued to be so for many, many years, whilst the attempts at legislation on this point only produced riot and confusion (culminating in the next reign in the notable rebellion of Wat Tyler, and leading eventually to the emancipation of the English peasantry), things appeared to be returning to their normal condition, and men began to resume their wonted apathy of mind, and to cease to think of the scourge as the direct visitation of God.
Sir Hugh had been one of those most alarmed by the ravages of the plague. He was full of the blind superstition of a thoroughly irreligious man, and he knew well that he had been dabbling in forbidden arts, and had been doing things that were supposed in those days to make a man peculiarly the prey of the devil after death. Thus when the Black Death had visited the country, and he had heard on all sides that it was the visitation of God for the sins of the nations, he had been seized with a panic which had been some years in cooling, and he had made pilgrimages and had paid a visit to his Holiness the Pope in order to feel that he had made amends for any wrongdoing in his previous life.
He had during this fit of what was rather panic than repentance avoided Woodcrych sedulously, as the place where these particular sins which frightened him now had been committed. He had thus avoided any encounter with Peter Sanghurst, and Joan had hoped that the shadow of that evil man was not destined to cross her path again. But, unluckily for her hopes, a reaction had set in in her father's feelings. His blind, unreasoning terror had now given place to an equally wild and reckless confidence and assurance. The Black Death had come and gone, and had passed him by (he now said) doing him no harm. He had obtained the blessing of the Pope, and felt in his heart that he could set the Almighty at defiance. His revenues, much impoverished through the effects of the plague, made the question of expenditure the most pressing one of the hour; and the knight had come to Woodcrych with the distinct intention of prosecuting those studies in alchemy and magic which a year or two back he had altogether forsworn.