Darnley; or, The Field of the Cloth of Gold

by G. P. R. James

The sounds gradually ceased, but yet his lips continued to move; his lips lost their motion, but his eyes were fixed, full of hope, upon the cross; a film came over them; it passed away, and the light beamed up again--shone brightly for a moment--waned--vanished--and all was death. The eyes were still fixed upon the cross, but that bright thing, life, was there no more. To look at them, no one could say what was gone between that minute and the one before; and yet it was evident that they were now but dust: the light was extinguished, the wine was poured out, and it was but the broken lamp, the empty urn, that remained to go down into the tomb.

Constance closed his eyes, and weeping bitterly, knelt down with the old monk, and joined in the prayer that he addressed to heaven. She then rose, and seated herself by all that remained of her dead friend, feeling alone in all the world, solitary, friendless, desolate; and straining her sweet eyes upon the cold, unresponsive countenance of the dead, she seemed bitterly to drink to the dregs the cup of hopelessness which that sight offered.

No one spoke. The monk himself was silent, seeming to think that the prayer he had offered to the Deity was the only fitting language for the presence of the dead; when a sound was heard without, and the door, gently opening, admitted the form of Jekin Groby. The good clothier thought the old man still slept, as when he had left the cottage, and advanced on tiptoe for fear of waking him; but the lifted hand of the monk, the streaming eyes of Constance, and the cold, rigid stiffness of the face before him, warned him of what had happened; and pausing suddenly, he clasped his hands with a look of unaffected sorrow. "Good God!" cried he, "he is dead! Alas the day!" Constance's tears streamed afresh. "Lady," said the worthy man, in a kindly tone, "take comfort! He is gone to a better place than we have here, poor hapless souls! And surely, if all were as well fitted for that place as he was, we should have little cause to fear our death, and our gossips little cause to weep. Take comfort, sweet lady! take comfort! Our God is too good for us to murmur when he cuts our measure short."

There was something in the homely consolation of the honest Englishman that touched Constance to the heart, and yet she could not refrain from weeping even more than before.

"Nay, nay, dear lady," continued Jekin, affected almost to tears himself; "you must come away from here. I cannot bear to see you weep so; and though I am but a poor clothier, and little fitted to put myself in his place that is gone, I will never leave you till I see you safe. Indeed I won't! Come, lady, into the other cottage hard by, and we will send some one to watch here in your place. Lord, Lord! to think how soon a fellow-creature is gone! Sure I thought to find him better when I came back. Come, lady, come!"

"Perhaps I had better," replied Constance, drying her tears. "My cares for him are useless; yet, though I murmur not at God's will, I must e'en weep, for I have lost as good a friend, and the world has lost as good a man, as ever it possessed. But I will go; for it is in vain to stay here and encourage unavailing grief." She then addressed a few sentences to the monk in French, thanking him for his charitable offices towards her dead friend, and begging him to remain there till she could send some one to watch the body; adding, that if he would come after that to the adjoining cottage, she would beg him to convey to his convent a small gift on her part.

The monk bowed his head, and promised to obey; and Constance, giving one last look to the inanimate form of the excellent being she had just lost, followed Jekin Groby to the cottage hard by, where, begging to be left alone, she once more burst into tears, and let both her sorrow and despondency have way, feeling that sort of oppression at her heart which can be relieved but by weeping.

It is needless to follow farther such sad scenes; to tell the blunt grief of Bradford, when he returned and found that his errand had been in vain; or to describe the funeral of good Dr. Wilbraham, which took place the next day (for so custom required) in the little cemetery of Whitesand Bay.

Immediately this was over, Lady Constance prepared to set out for Boulogne, hoping to find a refuge in the heart of France till she had time to consider and execute some plan for her future conduct. We have twice said, that the sailor, in tying her to the plank on which she had floated from the shipwrecked vessel, had fastened to the end of the board nearest her feet one of her own leathern cases, for the purpose of keeping her head raised above the water; and in this, as it luckily happened, were all the jewels and the money which she had brought with her from London.

It would doubtless have rendered her situation much more critical and interesting if she had been deprived of all such resources; but as the fact was so, it is necessary to state it. No difficulty, therefore, seemed likely to present itself in her journey to her own estates, except that which might arise in procuring a litter to convey her on her way, or in meeting with some female attendant willing to accompany her. The latter of these was soon done away with; for the daughter of the cottagers where she had lodged, a gay, good-humoured Picarde, gladly undertook the post of waiting-woman to the sweet lady, whose gentleness had won them all; and Bradford, who, from a soldier, a sailor, a shipwright, and a Rochester rioter, had now become a squire of dames, was despatched to Boulogne to see if he could buy or hire a litter and horses.