Part 10

"My child," said Lady Judith gently, "when some duty is brought to thy remembrance, is there nothing within thee which feels as if it rose up, and said, 'Oh, but I do not want to do that!'--never, Helena?"

"Oh yes! very often," said I.

"That is the flesh," said she. "And 'they that are of Christ the flesh have crucified, with its passions and its lusts.'"

"Oh dear!" I exclaimed, almost involuntarily.

"Very unpleasant, is it not?" said Lady Judith, smiling. "Ah, dear child, the flesh takes long in dying. Crucifixion is a very slow process; and a very painful process. They that are not willing to 'endure hardness' had better not enlist in the army of Jesus Christ."

"Ah, that is what I always thought," said I; "religious persons cannot be very happy. Of course, it would not be right for them; they wait till the next world. And yet--old Marguerite always seems happy. I do not quite understand it."

"Child!" Lady Judith dropped her broidering, and the deep, sweet grey eyes looked earnestly into mine. "What dost thou know of happiness? Helena, following Christ is not a hardship; it is a luxury. The happiness--or rather the mirth--of this world is often incompatible with it; but it is because the one is so far above the other that it extinguishes it, as the light of the sun extinguishes the lamp. Yet who would prefer the lamp before the sunlight? Tell me, Helena, hast thou any wish to go to Heaven?"

"Certainly, holy Mother."

"And what dost thou expect to find there? I should be glad to know."

I could hardly tell where to begin.

"Well," I said, after a moment's thought, "I expect to fly, and to enjoy myself intensely; and never to have another pain, nor shed a tear; and to see all whom I love, and be always with them, and love them and be loved by them for ever and ever. And there will be all manner of delights and pleasures. I cannot think of anything else."

"And that is thy Heaven?" said Lady Judith, with a smile in which I thought the chief ingredient was tender compassion, though I could not see why. "Ah, child, it would be no Heaven at all to me. Verily, 'as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.' Pleasure, and ease, and earthly love--these are thy treasures, Helena. 'For where thy treasure is, there shall thine heart be.'"

"But what is the matter with my Heaven?" said I, feeling a little aggrieved.

"Why, my child, thou hast left out the central figure. What were a coronation if there were no king? or a wedding where there were no bride? Why, what was left would be equivalent to nothing. Ask thine old nurse, and see if thy Heaven would satisfy her. Ah, 'whom have we in Heaven but _Thee_? and there is none upon earth that we desire in comparison of Thee!' Old Marguerite understands that. Dost thou, my maiden?"

I shook my head. I felt too mortified to speak. To have a poor, ignorant villein woman held up to me, as knowing more than I knew, and being happier than I, really was humiliating. Yet I could not resent it from one so high as Lady Judith.

Lady Judith would have said more, I fancy, but Melisende came in, and she quietly dropped the matter, as she generally does if any third person enters. But the next morning, as Marguerite was dressing my hair, I asked her what her notion of Heaven was.

"Inside with the blessed Lord, and the Devil and all the sins and evil things left outside," she said. "Ah, it will be rest to be rid of evil; but it will be glory to be with the Lord."

"And the pleasures, and the flying, and all the delightful things, Margot!" said I.

"Ah, yes, that will be very nice," she admitted. "And to meet those whom we have lost--that will be the very next best thing to seeing the good Lord."

"Hast thou lost many whom thou hast loved, Margot?"

"Ah, no--very few, compared with some. My mother, and my husband, and my two children:--that is all. I never knew my father, and I was an only child. But it may be, the fewer one has to love, the more one loves them."

"An only child!" said I. "But Perette calls thee aunt?"

"Ah, yes, she is my husband's niece,--the same thing."

I think Marguerite seems to agree with Lady Judith, though of course she does not express herself so well.

And I cannot help wondering how they arrange in Heaven. I suppose there will be thrones nearest the good Lord for the kings and the princes who will be there: and below that, velvet settles for the nobles; and beneath again, the crowd of common people. I should think that would be the arrangement. Because, of course, no one could expect them to mingle all together. That would be really shocking.

Yet I cannot altogether make it out. If Messeigneurs the holy Apostles were originally fishermen, and worked for their living--it is very queer. I do not understand it. But I suppose the holy angels will take care to put it right, and have a proper barrier between the Apostles and the nobles, and the poor villeins, who are admitted of special grace, through their own good deeds, and the super-abundant merits of the holy saints.

In the afternoon, when Guy was in audience of the Lord King and the Lady Queen, and Lady Isabel and Melisende were riding forth, with Messire Homfroy and Amaury as their cavaliers, I found Lady Judith and Lady Sybil busy spinning, and I brought my broidery and sat down with them. We did not talk much for a while,--only a few words now and then: when all at once Lady Judith said--

"Helena, wilt thou try this needle for thy work?"

I took the needle, and threaded it, and set to work again: but I found to my surprise that I could not get on at all. The needle would hardly go through the silk, and it left an ugly hole when it did. Lady Judith went on with her spinning for a few minutes, but at length she looked up and said--

"Well, Helena, how dost thou like that needle?"

"Not at all, holy Mother, if it please you," said I, "for I cannot get on with it."

She selected another, and gave it me.

"Oh, this is beautiful for broidery!" I said; "so fine and sharp."

"It is the answer to a question thou wert asking me yesterday," said Lady Judith, "and I gave thee no reply. Canst thou guess what the question was?"

I could not, and said so. I did not remember asking anything that had to do with needles, and I never thought of any hidden meaning.

"Thy question was, What is the world?--and, what harm does the world do to us? That needle that I first gave thee has its point blunted. And that is what the world does to a child of God. It blunts his point."

"I do not understand," said I.

"Little Helena," said Lady Judith, "before a point can be blunted, there must be one to blunt. Thou couldst not sew with a wooden post. So, before the world can injure thy spiritual life, there must be spiritual life to injure. There is no poison that will harm a dead man."

"But, holy Mother, are there two worlds?" said I. "For religious persons give up the world."

"My child, thine heart is a citadel which the foe can never enter, unless there be a traitor within the walls to open the postern gate. But there is such a traitor, Helena; and he is always on the watch. Be thou ever on the watch too. Yet another matter stands first:--Who reigns in thy citadel? Hast thou ever given thine heart to God, maiden?"

"Can I give my heart, holy Mother? It seems to me that love is rather like a plant that grows, than like a treasure that is given."

"Thou art right: but the planting must be sometime. Hast thou ever asked God to take thine heart? For as a holy man of old hath said,--'If Thou leave me to myself, I shall not give it Thee.'"

I shook my head. It all sounded strange to me.

"If the usurper is in the citadel, dear child, he will hold the gates against the rightful King: and, Helena, there are no traitors in His camp. Thou art not a sword, nor a shield, which can do nothing of itself; but a human creature with a living will, which can choose either to open the gates to the King, or to shut them against His trumpeter when He sends thee summons to surrender. Nay, thou not only canst choose; thou must: at this moment, at every moment, thou art choosing. What message hast thou sent back to thy rightful Lord, both by right and purchase? Is it 'Come Thou, and reign over me;' or is it, 'Go back to Thy place, for I will have none of Thee'?"

I would willingly not have answered: but I felt it would be to fail in respect to Lady Judith's age and position. I stammered out something about hoping that I should make my salvation some time.

"My child, didst thou ever do any thing at any time but _now_?" said Lady Judith.

I suppose that is true; for it is always now, when we actually come to do it.

"But, holy Mother, there is so much to give up if one becomes religious!" said I.

"What is there to give up, that thou couldst take with thee into Heaven?"

"But there will be things in Heaven to compensate," said I.

"And is there nothing in Christ to compensate?" she replied, with a momentary flash in the grey eyes. "What is Heaven but God? 'The City had no need of the sun, for the glory of God did lighten her:' 'and temple I saw none in her, for the Lord God the Almighty is Temple to her, and the Lamb.'"

Lady Sybil seemed interested; but I must confess that I thought the conversation had assumed a very disagreeable tone; and I wondered how it was that both Lady Judith and my old Marguerite spoke to me as if they thought I did not serve God. It is very strange, when I hear the holy mass sung every morning, and I have only just offered another neuvaine at the Holy Sepulchre. However, Easter will soon be here, and I mean to be very attentive to my devotions throughout the Holy Week, and see if that will satisfy Lady Judith. I don't want her to think ill of me. I like her too well for that, though I do wish she would not talk as if she fancied I did not serve God. I am sure I am quite as good as most people, and that is saying a great deal.

No, it can never be wrong to hate people. It can't be, and it shan't! And I just wish I could roast that Count of Tripoli before the fire in the Palace kitchen till he was done to a cinder. I am white-hot angry; and like Jonah the Prophet, I do well to be angry. The mean, fawning, sneaking, interloping rascal! I knew what he meant by his professions of love and friendship! Guy's eyes were shut, but not mine. The wicked, cruel, abominable scoundrel!--to climb up with Guy's help to within an inch of the top where he sat, and then to leap the inch and thrust him out of his seat! I cannot find words ugly enough for him. I hate, hate, hate him!

To have supplanted my Guy! After worming himself into the confidence of the Lord King, through Guy's friendship--ay, there is the sting!--to have carried to the King all the complaints that he heard against Guy, until he, poor helpless Seigneur! (I don't feel nearly so vexed with him) really was induced to believe Guy harsh and incapable, and to take out of his hands the government of the kingdom. And then he put in that serpent, that false Judas, that courtly hypocrite--Oh dear! I cannot find words to describe such wickedness--and he is Regent of the Holy Land, and Guy must kneel to him.

I could cut him in slices, and enjoy doing it!

I am angry with Melisende, who can find nothing to say but--"Ah, the fortune of Courts--one down to-day, another up to-morrow." And I am almost angry with Marguerite, who says softly--"Hush, then, my Damoiselle! Is it not the good God?"

No, it is not. It is the Devil who sends sorrow upon us, and makes us hate people, and makes people be hateful. I am sure the good God never made Count Raymond do such wicked things.

Instead of casting Adam and Eva out of Paradise,--Oh why, why did the good God not cast out the Devil?

"Is my Damoiselle so much wiser than the Lord?" quietly asks Marguerite.

I cannot understand it. The old cry comes up to me again,--Oh, if I could know! Why cannot I understand?

And then Lady Judith lays her soft hand on my head, and says words which I know come from the holy Evangel,--"'What I do, thou knowest not now.'" Ay, I know not I must not know. I can only stretch forth appealing hands into the darkness, and feel nothing. Not like her and Marguerite. They too stretch forth helpless hands into the darkness, but they find God.

It must be a very different thing. Why cannot I do the same? Is He not willing that I should find Him too?--or am I not worthy?

I suppose it must be my fault. It seems as if things were always one's own fault. But I do not think they are any better on that account; especially when you cannot make out where your fault lies.

Guy behaves like a saint. He does not see any fault in Count Raymond: I believe he won't. Lady Sybil, poor darling! looks very grieved; but not one word of complaint can I get her to utter.

As to Amaury, when I have quite finished slicing up the Count, if he does not mind, I shall begin with him. What does he say but--"Well, a great deal of it is Guy's own fault. Why wasn't he more careful? Surely, if he has any sense, he might expect to be envied and supplanted, when he had climbed to such a height."

"If he has any sense!" Pretty well for Messire Amaury!

*CHAPTER IX.*

_*ELAINE FINDS MORE THAN SHE EXPECTED*_*.*

"And when I know not what Thou dost, I'll wait the light above." --DODDRIDGE.

Both Guy and Lady Sybil are in a state of the highest ecstasy, and say that they are abundantly recompensed for all their past disappointments. And this is because they are disappointed just like Amaury, but they bear it in as different a style as possible. I think, if I were they, I should consider I had more right to be troubled of the two, for little Heloise is a strong child enough, and is growing almost pretty: while dear Lady Sybil's baby girl is a little delicate thing, that the wind might blow away. Of course I shall love her far better, just because she is Guy's and Sybil's; and she crept into the warmest corner of my heart when she showed me her eyes--not Lady Sybil's gentle grey, but those lovely flashing dark eyes of Guy's; the most beautiful eyes, I think, that were ever seen.

"Marguerite, is not she charming?" I cried.

"Ah, the little children always are," said the old woman.

(I don't agree with her--little children can be great teases.) But Marguerite had more to say.

"My Damoiselle sees they are yet innocent of actual sin; therefore they are among the best things in God's world. I may be wrong, but I think the good God must have been the loveliest babe ever seen. How I should have liked to be there!--if the holy Mother would have allowed me to hold Him in my arms!"

"Ah, I suppose only the holiest saints would be allowed to touch Him," said I.

"I am not so sure, if my Damoiselle will pardon me. She was no saint, surely, that crept into the Pharisee's house to break the casting-bottle[#] on His feet; yet the hardest word she had from Him was 'Go in peace.' Ah, I thank the good God that His bidding is not, 'Come unto Me, all ye that are holy.' There are few of us would come, if it were! But 'Come unto Me, all ye that are weary'--that takes us all in. For we are all weary some time. The lot of a woman is a weary lot, at the best."

[#] Used to sprinkle perfumes.

"Well, it may be, among the villeins," said I.

"My Damoiselle, I never saw more bitter tears than those of the old Lady de Chatelherault--mother of the Lady de Lusignan--when her fair-haired boy was brought in to her in the bower, with the green weeds in his long bright hair, and the gold broidery of his velvet tunic tarnished by the thick stagnant water. Early that morning he had been dancing by her, with the love-light in his beautiful blue eyes; and now, when the dusk fell, they laid him down at her feet, drowned and dead, with the light gone out of the blue eyes for ever. Ah, I have seen no little sorrow amongst men and women in my seventy years!--but I never saw a woman look, more than she did, as if she had lost the light of life. The villeins have a hard lot, as the good God knows; but all the sorrow of life is not for the villeins--no, no!"

How oddly she puts things! I should never have thought of supposing that the villeins had any sorrow. A certain dull kind of coarse grief, or tired feeling, perhaps, they may have at times, like animals: but sorrow surely is a higher and finer thing, and is reserved for the nobles. As to old Marguerite herself, I never do quite think of her as a villein. She has dwelt with nobles all her life, so to speak, and is not of exactly the same common sort of stuff that they are.

Yesterday afternoon Lady Sybil and I were alone in the bower, and she had the baby in her arms. The little creature is to be made a Christian on Sunday. I asked her what name it was to have. I expected her to say either Marie, which is the Lady Queen's name, or Eustacie, the name of Guy's mother. But she said neither. She answered, "Agnes." And she spoke in that hushed, reverent voice, in which one instinctively utters the names of the beloved dead. I could not think whose it could be. The name has never been in our House, to my knowledge; and I was not aware of it in Lady Sybil's line.

"Dost thou not know whose name it is, Helena?" asked Lady Sybil. I fancy she answered my look.

"No," said I.

"My dear lord has been very good to me," she said. "He made not the least objection. It was my mother's name, Helena."

"Oh!" said I, enlightened. "Lady Sybil, do tell me, can you remember the Lady Queen your mother? How old were you when she died?"

She did not answer me for an instant. When I looked up, I saw tears dropping slowly on the infant's robes.

"When she--died!" There was a moment's pause. "Ay, there are more graves than men dig in the churchyard! When she--_died_,--Helena, I was six years old."

"Then you can remember her?" I said eagerly. "Oh, I wish I could remember mine."

"Ay, memory may be intense bliss," she answered; "or it may be terrible torture. I can remember a fair face bent down over mine, soft, brooding arms folded round me, loving kisses from gentle lips. And then----O Helena, did my lord tell thee she was dead? It was kind of him; for he knows."[#]

[#] I trust it will not be imagined from this that I think lightly of "white lies." Romanists, as a rule, are very lenient towards them.

Lady Sybil was sobbing.

"Then she is not dead?" I said, in a low voice.

"I do not know!" she replied. "No one knows. She is dead to us. Oh, why, why does holy Church permit such terrible things?--What am I saying? May the good Lord pardon me if I speak against Him!--But I cannot understand why it must be. They had been wedded nearly ten years, Helena,--I mean my parents,--when it was discovered that they were within the prohibited degrees. Why cannot dispensations be given when such things occur? They knew nothing of it. Why must they be parted, and she be driven into loneliness and obscurity, and I---- Well, it was done. A decree of holy Church parted them, and she went back to her people. We have never heard another word about her. But those who saw her depart from Jerusalem said she seemed like one whose very heart was broken."

"And she never came back?" I said pityingly.

"Is it much wonder?" answered Lady Sybil, in a low voice, rocking the child gently in her arms. "It would have been much, I think, for the crowned and anointed Queen of Jerusalem to steal into her capital as Damoiselle de Courtenay. But it would have been far more for the wife and mother to come suing to her supplanter for a sight of her own children. No, I cannot wonder that she never, never came back."

I was silent for a little while, then I said--

"Was the Lord King as grieved as she? I cannot understand, if so, why they should not have obtained a dispensation, and have been married over again."

Lady Sybil shook her head, and I saw another tear drop on the baby's robe.

"No, Helena," she said, hardly above a whisper: "I do not think he was. He had the opportunity of allying himself with the Caesars. And there are men to whom a woman is a woman, and one woman is just as good as another, or very nearly so. Do men selling a horse stop to consider whether it will be as happy with the new master as the old? They do not care. And, very often, they cannot understand."

Ay, Amaury is one of that sort.

"And you think--if she be alive--that she will never come?" I asked.

"I hope she might. But I think she will not. Ah, how I have hoped it! Helena, hast thou wondered how it is that nothing short of absolute impossibility will suffer me to depute to another the daily distribution of the dole at the postern gate to those poor women that come for alms? Canst thou not guess that amongst all the faces I look but for one--for the one that might creep in there unrecognised to look on me, and that must never, never go away with a soreness at her heart, saying, 'She was not there!' Every loaf that I give to a stranger, I say, 'Pray for the soul of Agnes of Anjou!' And then, if some day she should creep in among the rest, and I should not know her--ah! but I think I should, if it were only by the mother-hunger in the eyes--but if she should, and hear that, and yet not speak, she will say in her heart, 'Sybil loves me yet.' And if she could only creep one step further,--'_God_ loves me yet!' For He does, Helena. Maybe He has comforted her long ago: but if she should not have found it out, and be still stretching forth numb hands in the darkness--and if I could say it to her! Now thou knowest why I call the babe by her name. I know not where she is, nor indeed if she is on earth. But He knows. And He may let her hear it. If she come to know that I have called my child by her name, she may not feel quite so lost and lonely. I have no other way to say to her,--'I have not forgotten thee; nor has God. I love thee; I would fain help thee. He loves thee and is ready to save thee.' Who can tell?--she _may_ hear."

"Oh dear, this is a bad world!" said I. "Why are people so hard on each other? We are all fellow-sinners, I suppose."

"Ah, Helena!" said Lady Sybil, with a sorrowful smile. "Hast thou not found, dear, that the greater sinner a man is himself, very generally, the harder he will be on other sinners--especially when their sins are of a different type from his own. The holier a man is, the more he hates sin, and yet the more tenderly will he deal with the sinner. For as sin means going away from God, so holiness must mean coming near God. And God is more merciful than men to all who come to Him for mercy."

Lady Judith came in while the last words were being spoken.

"I never can quite tell," said I, "what sin is. Why should some things be sin, and other things not be sin?"

"Go on, Helena," said Lady Judith, turning round with a smile. "Why should so many things be wrong, which I like, and so many things be right, which I do not like?"

"Well, holy Mother, it is something like that," said I, laughing. "Will you please to tell me why?"

"Because, my child, thou hast inherited a sinful nature."

"But I do not like sin--as sin," said I.

"Then temptation has no power over thee. Is it so? Art thou never 'drawn away of thine own lust, and enticed'?"

"Well, I am not perfect," said I. "I suppose nobody expects to be."

"Yet without absolute perfection, Helena, thou canst never enter Heaven."

"O holy Mother!" cried I.

"Where art thou about to get it?" said she.

"I am sure I do not know!" I replied blankly.

"Thou shouldst know, my child," she responded gently. "Think about it."

I cannot guess what she means. I am sure I may think about that for a year, and be no nearer when I have done.