Only the good pompous lord of the castle seemed unchanged; and he, "full of wise saws and modern instances," walked gravely about, reasoning in very trite sort upon all he saw, and lecturing rather than conversing.
Early in the morning of the day after Fulmer's departure, all those who were mere guests, invited for a day or two, took their leave and left the castle. The abbess proposed to return to her cure on the following morning; and Lord Calverly was laying out various plans for making the heavy time pass lightly, when a courier arrived with letters from the king's lieutenant in the county.
"Now good faith," he said, "this is unfortunate; for it breaks all my purposes. This noble lord here requires my immediate presence, to consult as to the best and most approved means of preserving peace and tranquillity in the county. He knows I have some experience in such things; and, though my judgment be but a poor judgment, yet he has confidence therein. Strange stories are current, he says, of meetings of peasantry by night, and strangers coming from distant parts to be present thereat. God forefend that there should be new troubles coming! But I must to horse and away. I will return before night; and, in the mean time, lords and ladies, you must amuse yourselves as best you may. There are fish in the stream, deer in the park, chess, dice, and other games in the little hall, instruments of music in the gallery, lutes, citherns, and the rest, so that you have means of entertainment if you seek it; and, good faith, if you are dull I cannot help it; for you know, my Lord Chartley, the call of duty is imperative, and courtesy, which gives place to nothing else, must yield to that."
They were not dull; but how shall I describe the passing of that day? To Chartley and to Iola it was a long draught of the cup of joy. Did they drink too deeply? I almost fear they did. Chartley resolved to act in all things prudently, to be calm, quiet, and upon his guard, though courteous and easy, as he would be to any lady in whom he had no interest. Iola resolved neither to be cold nor warm in manner towards him, neither to encourage nor to repel, to seek nor to avoid, to let his conduct be the guide of hers, to govern her feelings and to tranquillise her heart.
Oh, resolutions, resolutions! How that heart, which was to be so tranquil, beat, when her uncle rode away, and she felt herself left with him she loved, to pass the hours almost as they would! Heaven knows how they flew. Chartley was often with her. He did not shut himself in his chamber. He did not ride out to hunt, nor walk forth to meditate alone. At first he conversed with her, as they had done at their meeting in the abbey, gaily, cheerfully, with a vein of thought running through the merriment, and a touch of feeling softening the whole. But they were sometimes left alone together; and gradually they began to call up the memories of the past, to talk of scenes and incidents which had occurred, and words which had been spoken during the long adventurous night they had passed in the forest. It was dangerous ground; they felt it shake beneath them; but yet they would not move away. Their hearts thrilled as they spoke. Iola, with the eye of memory, saw Chartley sitting at her feet; and he, in fancy, felt her breath fanning his cheek as her head drooped upon his shoulder in sleep. Oh, how treacherous associations will open the gates of the heart to any enemy that desires to enter! They approached nearer and nearer to subjects which they had determined to avoid; they even spoke of them in circuitous and ambiguous phrases. The words which they uttered did not express their full meaning, but the tones and the looks did; and, by the time that the sun had sunk to within half an hour's journey of the horizon, Iola and Chartley knew that they loved each other, as well as if they had spoken and vowed it a thousand times.
She was agitated, much agitated, it is true, but perhaps less so than he was; and to see why, we must look for a moment into their hearts. Iola felt that in loving him she was doing no wrong, that the contract which bound her to Lord Fulmer was altogether void and invalid, that marriages in infancy, where that mutual and reasonable consent is absent, upon which every contract must be based, were altogether unlawful; and that therefore, morally and religiously, she was as free as if her relations had never unjustly made a promise in her name. It may be that she had been easily convinced--it may be that love for one and disliking for another had smoothed the way for such conviction; but still she was convinced; and no consciousness of doing wrong added weight to other emotions. She might contemplate the future with dread; she might gaze upon the coming days as upon a wide sea of tumultuous waves, through which she could see no track, beyond which appeared no shore; and she might tremble lest the billows should overwhelm her. But she felt confident in the protection of Heaven, and sure that she was doing nought to forfeit it.
Not so exactly Chartley. Not alone the future, but the present also, had its darkness for him. He knew not her exact situation; he knew not whether the ceremonies of the church--often in those days performed between mere children, and looked upon, when once performed, as a sacrament, merely requiring an after benediction to be full and complete--had or had not taken place between her and Lord Fulmer. His reason might teach him that such espousals, where neither the heart nor the judgment were consulted, were in themselves wicked and dangerous; but his mind had not yet reached the point of considering them quite invalid. He had been brought up as a strict Roman Catholic. It was the only religion tolerated in his native land; and, although he could not but see that gross corruptions had crept into the church to which he belonged, and that many of the grossest of those corruptions had been made the foundation of dogmas even more dangerous than themselves, yet, not having met with any of the followers of Wickliffe, he had never heard the heresies, the idolatries, or the usurpations of the Roman church fully exposed--nor indeed attacked--till passing through Bohemia, in his return from the East, he had met with some of the disciples of Huss at a small road-side inn. The conversation had been free; for, far from large towns, the doctrines which the council of Constance could not suppress were more boldly spoken; and Chartley heard words which shook his faith in the infallibility of Rome, and made him, determine to inquire and judge for himself at an after period. He had not yet inquired, however; and, even while he gave way to the impulses of the heart, he felt doubtful, fearful of his own conduct. Had such not been the case, the passion in his breast would have found open and undisguised utterance. Dangers and difficulties he would have set at nought; impediments he would have overleaped, with the knowledge that he was loved in return. But now he doubted, as I have said, hesitated, suffered his love to be seen, rather than declared it openly.
The abbess sat embroidering at one end of the hall, while Iola and Chartley stood together in the oriel window at the other; and Sir William Arden, with the right knee thrown across the left, and his head bent, pored over the miniatures in a richly illuminated manuscript of Monstrelet, lifting his eyes from time to time, with a thoughtful look, towards Chartley and Iola, and thinking, if the truth must be told, that Constance was somewhat long absent. The glow of the evening sun, poured full through the window at which the lovers were standing, concentrated upon them by the stone work; and, both so beautiful and full of grace, they looked in that haze of golden beams like the old pictures of saints in glory. Just at that moment Constance entered the hall with a light step, and a more cheerful look than usual. She too had been reading; and she had found what she sought, truth--truth, which came home to her own heart, and dispelled every doubt and shadow within it. She looked up at the window, as she crossed the hall, and said, in a low sweet voice:
"What a fair evening! The sunset must look beautiful from the ramparts."
"So it must!" exclaimed Iola. "Let us go out and enjoy it. Will you come, dear lady mother?" she added, raising her voice to reach the ear of the abbess.