Part 11

I have had a great pleasure to-day, in the shape of a letter from Monseigneur our father, addressed to Guy, but meant for us all three. He wrote about six months after we set out; and I should hope he has before now received my letter, which I sent off on the first opportunity after our arrival in the Holy City. Every body seems to be well, and Alix has a baby boy, whom she means to call after Monseigneur--Geoffrey. There is no other special news. Level, he says, misses us sorely, and lies at my door with his nose between his paws, as if he were considering what it could all mean. I wonder whether he thinks he comes to any satisfactory solution.

The Lord King, I hear, has been more indisposed for some days past. The Lady Queen is very attentive to him. Lady Isabel and her lord have gone through another tremendous quarrel,--about what I do not know.

Early yesterday morning our sister Eschine's second baby was announced, and in the afternoon the holy Patriarch baptized it by Guy's name. Amaury was in ecstasies with his boy; but alas! in the evening the poor little thing fell into convulsions, and barely lived to see the dawn of another day. Amaury passed from the climax of triumph to the depths of despair. He growled and snarled at every body, and snapped at Eschine in particular, as though he thought she had let her child die on purpose to vex him. That she could be in as much distress as himself, did not seem to occur to him. If anything could have provoked me more than Amaury's unreasonableness, it would have been the calm patience with which Eschine took it. There he stalked about, grumbling and growling.

"Why did you all let the child die?" he wanted to know--as if we could have helped it. "There is not one of you has any sense!"--as if he had! "Alix's boy manages to live. She knows how to treat him. Women are all idiots!" (Alix, apparently, not being a woman.)

Poor Eschine lay still, a few tears now and then making their way down her white cheeks, and meekly begging her lord and master's pardon for what she had not done. When he was gone, she said--I think to anticipate what she saw on the tip of my tongue--

"Thou knowest, Elaine dear, he is not angry with me. Men do set such store by a son. It is only natural he should be very much distressed."

She will persist in making excuses for him.

"Distressed?--well!" said I. "But he does not need to be so silly and angry. Natural!--well, yes,--I think it is natural to Amaury to be an idiot. I always did think so."

"O Lynette! don't, dear!" pleaded Eschine.

I am beginning to think I have been rather unjust to Eschine when I said there was nothing in her; but it has taken a long while to come out. And it seems to come rather in the form of doing and bearing, than of thinking and saying.

But that Amaury is a most profound donkey no mortal man can doubt,--or at any rate, no mortal woman.

I was awfully startled this morning when Marguerite undrew my curtains, and told me that our Lord King Beaudouin had been commanded to God. It seems now that for some time past he has been more ill than any one knew, except the Lady Queen his stepmother. What that wicked Count of Tripoli may have known, of course, I cannot say. But I am sure he has had a hand in the late King's will. The crown is left to the little King, Beaudouin V., and our sweet Sybil is disinherited. What that really means, I suppose, is that the Count is jealous of Guy's influence over his Lady, and imagines that he can sway the child better than the mother.

There are to be various changes in consequence of the Lord King's death. The Lady Queen returns to her own family at Byzantium. I do hope Lady Judith will not go with her; but I am very much afraid she may. Guy talks about retiring to his city of Ascalon, but though I am sure Lady Sybil will submit to his will, I can see she does not want to leave her boy, though I do not believe she distrusts that wicked Tripoli as I do.

I asked Marguerite if she did not feel very angry.

"No," she said quietly. "Is my Damoiselle very angry?"

"Indeed I am," said I.

"Does my Damoiselle know what are the good Lord's purposes for Monseigneur Count Guy? It is more than old Marguerite does."

"Of course not: but I see what has happened."

"And not what will happen? Ah, that is not seeing much."

"But what can happen, to put things right again, Margot?"

"Ha! Do I know, I? No better than Monseigneur Saint Jacob, when his son, Monseigneur Saint Joseph, sent for his little brother, and refused to send the meal until he came. That is so beautiful a history!--and so many times repeated in this world. The poor old father!--he thought all these things were against him. He did not know what the good God was making ready for him. He did not know! And the good God will never be hurried. It is we that are in a hurry, poor children of time,--we want every thing to happen to-day. But He, who has eternity to work in, can afford to let things take their time. My Damoiselle does not know what old Helweh said to me yesterday."

"No. Who is Helweh?" said I.

"She is an Arab woman who serves in the kitchen."

"A Paynim? O Marguerite! What can a Paynim say worth hearing? Or is she a Christian?"

"If to be baptized is to be a Christian, as people always say, then Helweh is a Christian. But if to be a Christian is really to know and follow the Lord Christ--and it seems to me as if the Evangel always meant that--then I do not know. I am afraid Helweh does not understand much about that."

"Oh, if she has been christened, she must be a Christian," said I. "Well, what did she say?"

"She said--'All things come to him who knows how to wait.' It is a Saracen proverb."

"Well, I do not believe it."

"Ah, let my Damoiselle pardon me, but it is true."

"Well!" said I, half laughing, "then I suppose I do not know how to wait."

"I do not think my Damoiselle does," answered Marguerite quietly.

"Wilt thou teach me, Margot?"

"Ha! It takes the good God to teach that."

"I should not think it wanted much teaching."

"Let my Damoiselle bear with her servant. The good God has been teaching it to me for seventy years, and I dare not make so bold as to say I have learned it yet."

"Why, Margot, thou art as quiet, and calm, and patient as a stone."

"Ah! not _here_," she said, laying her hand upon her bosom. "Perhaps here,--and here,"--touching her eyes and lips. "But down there,--no!"

"But for what, or for whom, art thou waiting, Margot?" I asked, rather amused.

"Ha!--it ought to be only whom. But it is too often _what_. We are like the little children, waiting for the father to come home, but thinking more of the toys and bonbons he may bring than of himself. And then there is another thing: before we can learn to wait, we must learn to trust."

"To trust what, Margot?"

"I believe we all trust in something, if my Damoiselle pleases. A great many trust in themselves; and a great many more trust in circumstances,--fate, or chance, or luck,--as they call it. Some few trust in other human creatures; and their waking is often the saddest of all. But it seems as if the one thing we found it hardest to do was to trust the good God. He has to drive us away, often, from every other trust, before we will learn to trust Him. Oh, how we must grieve His heart, when He has done so much for us, and yet we _will not_ trust Him!"

I wonder what she means. I feel as if I should like to know, and could not tell how to begin.

The Lady Queen is gone back to her people. And I am so glad--Lady Judith is not gone with her. I was sadly afraid she would do. But Melisende is gone, and Messire Renaud de Montluc, for whom the Lady Queen trusts to obtain some high position at the Court of the Byzantine Caesar.

I am not at all sorry that Messire Renaud is gone. He made me feel uncomfortable whenever I looked at him. I cannot well express my feeling in words; but he gave me a sensation as if nothing stood on any thing, and every thing was misty and uncertain. I fancy some people like that sort of feeling. I detest it. I like figures (though Amaury says it is a very unladylike taste) because they are so definite and certain. Two and two make four; and they will make four, do what you please with them. No twisting and turning will persuade them to be either three or five. Now I like that--far better than some arts, more interesting in themselves, such as music, painting, or embroidery, of which people say, "Yes, it is very fair,--very good,--but of course it might be better." I like a thing that could not be better. Guy says that is very short-sighted, and argues a want of ambition in me. I do not quite see that. If a thing be the best it can possibly be, why should I want it to be better?

"Oh, but one wants an aim," says Guy; "one must have a mark to shoot at. If I were besieging a castle, and knew beforehand that I could not possibly take it, it would deprive me of all energy and object. There is nothing so devoid of interest as doing something which leads to nothing, and is worth nothing when done."

"Well," I say then, "I think if sieges and wars were done away with, it would be no bad thing. Just think what misery they cause."

But such an outcry comes upon me then! Amaury informs me that he is incomparably astonished at me. Is not war the grandest of all employments? What on earth could the nobles do, if there were no wars? Would I have them till the earth like peasants, or read and write like monks, or sew and dress wounds like women?

And Guy says, good-naturedly,--"Oh, one of Elaine's curious notions. She never thinks like other people."

"But think," I say, "of the suffering which comes from war--the bereft widows and fatherless children, and human pain and sorrow. Does a woman weeping over her husband's corpse think war grand, do you suppose?"

"Stuff!" says Amaury. "Can't she get another?"

(Would he say, if Eschine were to die,--"Never mind, I can get another"? Well, I should not much wonder if he would!)

Once, after a rather keen contest of this sort, I asked old Marguerite if she liked war. I saw her eyes kindle.

"Damoiselle," she said, "my husband followed his Seigneur to the war, and left me ill at home in my cot. He had no power to choose, as my Damoiselle must know. The night fell, and the Seigneur came home with banners flying, and along the village street there were bonfires and rejoicings for a great victory. But my husband did not come. I rose from my sick-bed, and wrapped myself in a sheepskin, and went out to the fatal field. Like a candle in the sunlight, the pain of the heart put out the pain of the body. What I saw that night my Damoiselle will not ask. It were not meet to rehearse in the ears of a young noble lady. I do not know how I bore it, only that I did bear--going from one to another in the moonlight, and turning my lantern on the dead still faces, ever looking for that face which I feared to find. And at last I found him, my Piers, the one love of my young life,--where the fight had been the most terrible, and the dead lay thickest. I knew that he had acquitted himself right well, for his face was to the foe, and the broken shaft of his Seigneur's pennon was still grasped tightly in his hand. Damoiselle, there was no funeral pageant, no table tomb, no herald's cry for him. Strangers' hands buried him where he lay, as they might have buried the Seigneur's horse, if need were. And there were no white weeds and seclusion for me, his young widow, who knelt by my baby's cradle, too miserable for tears. But may be, in those halls where all souls are alike before the King of Kings, the Voice from the Throne said to him, 'Well done!' And the Voice did verily say to me, 'Fear not! Come unto Me, and I will give thee rest.'--Ah, my Damoiselle knows now what her old nurse thinks of war."

Oh, why must there be such things?

"How else could a knight win his spurs?" indignantly demands Amaury.

But surely, the winning of Amaury's spurs is not the only thing of any consequence in the world. Does the good God Himself take no account of widows' tears and orphans' wails, if only the knights win their spurs? Could not some other way be contrived for the spurs, which would leave people alive when it was finished?

"Now, Elaine, don't be such a simpleton!" says Amaury.

So at last, as nobody else (except Marguerite, who is nobody) seems to understand me, I ask Lady Judith what she thinks.

"My child," she says, "'He maketh wars to cease unto the ends of the earth; He breaketh the bow, and snappeth the spear in sunder, and burneth the chariot in the fire.' 'The Father of the age to come, the Prince of Peace!' It is one of His fairest titles. But not till He comes, Helena. Till then, earth will be red with the blood of her sons, and moistened with the tears of her daughters. Let us pray for His coming."

"But holy Mother, that is ages off!" said I.

"Is it?" she made answer. "Has the Lord told thee so much, Helena? Ah! it may be--I know not, but I see nothing else to keep Him--it may be, that if all the earth would come to Him to-day, He would come to us to-morrow."

"Holy Mother, I do not know what you mean by 'coming' to Him!"

"Dear Helena," she said gently, "thou wilt not know, till thou art ready to come."

"But I do not understand that," said I. "How am I to get ready?"

"'If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink.' 'If thou knewest the gift of God, thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given to thee water of life.' Art thou not athirst? and dost thou not know the gift of God, dear maiden? Then ask Him to bestow on thee the thirst, and the knowledge."

I really do not know whether it was right or wrong, but that night, after I had finished my Credo, and Paters, and the holy Angelical Salutation, I ventured to say, in my own words,--"Fair Father, Jesu Christ, give me what Lady Judith and Marguerite talk about." I hope it was not very wicked. I did so tremble! And I do not properly know what this thing is, only that it seems to make them happy; and why should I not be happy too? I suppose the good God will know all about it. And as He appears to be so condescending as to listen to Marguerite, who is but a villein, surely He will hear me, who am noble.

It is so odd that Amaury, who is such a simpleton himself, should be perpetually calling me a simpleton. I do think, the more foolish people are, the more fond they are of exhorting others not to be silly. It is very funny. But this world is a queer place.

"It is, indeed, Lynette," says Guy, with mock gravity, when I make the remark to him. "The queerest place I have been in these thirty years."

As Guy is scarcely twenty-seven, it may be supposed I cannot help laughing.

But there is another queer thing. It does really seem as if villeins--at least some villeins--had genuine feelings, just like us nobles. I have always thought that it was because Marguerite had associated so much with nobles, that she seemed a little different--just as you might impart the rose-scent to a handkerchief, if you shut it in a drawer with rose-leaves. But I know she did not become my mother's nurse until after her husband was dead: so she must have had feelings before that, while she was no better off than any other villein. It is very incomprehensible. And I suppose, too, when one comes to think about it, we are all children of Adam and Eva. How did the difference come, to begin with?

It is very difficult to tell how things began. It is a great deal easier to see how they end. Who would suppose, if men had never found out, that the great river Danube, which rolls into the Black Sea, almost like a sea itself in volume, came from the meltings of the ice and snow upon the hills of Switzerland?

"Ha!" says Marguerite, when I repeat my thoughts to her, "the great God is so rich that He can bring the large things out of the small. We others, we can only bring the small out of the large."

"That sounds like spoiling things," said I.

"Men are very apt to spoil what they touch," she answered. "The good Lord never touches anything that He does not leave more beautiful. Has He not blessed childhood and manhood, by becoming Child and Man? Is not the earth fairer since He dwelt on it? and the little children dearer, since He took them in His arms and blessed them? Ah, He might have cared for me, and felt with me, just as much, if He had never been a Man: but it would not have been the same thing to me. And He knew it. When we love one very much, Damoiselle, we love what he has touched: and if he touch us, ourselves, it sends a delicious thrill through us. The good Lord knew that when He took on Him our nature, with all its sufferings and infirmities,--when He touched us every where--in sorrow, and weariness, and poverty, and hunger, and pain, and death. We can suffer nothing which He has not suffered first,--on which He has not laid His hand, and blessed it for His chosen. Thanks be to His Name! It is like honey sweetening everything. And the things that are bitter and acid want the most sweetening. So the good Lord chose poverty and pain. Ease and riches are sweet of themselves. I have heard Father Eudes read of one or two feasts where He was: He blessed joy as well as sorrow,--perhaps lest we should fancy that there was something holy in pain and poverty in themselves, and something wicked in being comfortable and happy. Some people do think so, after all. But I have heard Father Eudes read a great deal more of funerals than feasts, where the blessed Lord was. He seemed to go where people wanted comforting, much oftener than where they were comfortable. He knew that many more would sorrow than rejoice."

What strange eyes Marguerite has! She can look at nothing, but she sees the good God. And the strangest thing is, that it seems to make her happy. It always makes me miserable. To think of God, when I am bright and joyous, is like dropping a black curtain over the brightness. Why cannot I be like Marguerite? I ought to be a great deal happier than she. There is something wrong, somewhere.

Then of course there must be something holy in poverty--voluntary poverty, that is--or why do monks and nuns take the vow of poverty? I suppose there is nothing holy in simply being poor, like a villein. And if our Lord really were poor, when He was on earth, that must have been voluntary poverty. I said as much to Margot.

"Damoiselle," said she, "every man who follows our Lord must carry his cross. His own cross,--not somebody else's. And that means, I think, the cross which the good God lays on His shoulders. The blessed Christ Himself did not cut His own cross. But we others, we are very fond of cutting our crosses for ourselves, instead of leaving the good God to lay them on us. And we always cut them of the wrong wood. We like them very light and pretty, with plenty of carving and gilding. But when the good Lord makes the crosses, He puts no carving on them; and He often hews out very rough and heavy ones. At least, He does so for the strong. He makes them light, sometimes, for the weak; but there is no gilding--only the pure gold of His own smile, and that is not in the cross itself, but in the sunlight which He sends upon it. But my Damoiselle will find, when men sort out the crosses, the strong walk away with the light ones, and the rough and heavy fall to the weak. The good Lord knows better than that."

"But we don't all carry crosses, Margot," said I; "only religious persons."

Marguerite shook her head decidedly.

"Damoiselle, all that learn of the good Lord must bear the cross. He said so. 'If any man serve Me, let him follow Me'--and again, 'If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.' Father Eudes read them both. My Damoiselle sees--'_any_ man.' That must mean all men."

Well, I cannot understand it I only feel more puzzled than ever. I am sure it would not make me happier to carry a heavy cross. Yet Lady Judith and Marguerite are happy; I can see they are. Religion and good people seem to be full of contradictions. How is one to understand them?

*CHAPTER X.*

_*PREPARING FOR THE STRUGGLE*_*.*

"He that hath a thousand friends hath not a friend to spare, And he that hath one enemy shall find him every where."

I have thought, and thought, about Lady Judith's question concerning perfection, and, as I expected, I cannot see my way through it at all. And what is more, I do not see how to reconcile it with what she said herself of Sister Eudoxia. So this morning I took the liberty of asking her what she meant.

Lady Judith smiled, and replied, "Wert thou puzzled, Helena?"

"Yes, holy Mother," said I, "very much."

"I am glad of it," she answered. "I wanted to puzzle thee, and make thee think."

"I have been thinking a great deal," I said, "but I cannot think my way out of the labyrinth."

"We must take counsel of Holy Writ to find our way out," answered Lady Judith; and she laid her hand on her Greek Bible, which is a very handsome book, bound in carved wood, and locked with a golden clasp. She unlocked it with the little key which hangs from her girdle, and said, "Now listen, Helena. In the days when our Lord dwelt on middle earth, there were certain men amongst the Jews, called Pharisees, who were deemed exceedingly holy persons. So exact were they in the fulfilment of all duties, that they did not reckon their tithes paid, unless they taxed the very pot-herbs in their gardens. Yet our Lord said to His disciples,--'If your righteousness surpass not that of the Pharisees, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of Heaven.'"

"Likely enough," said I. "Surely any christened man could easily be better than heathen Jews."

"But He said more, Helena. 'Be ye then perfect, even as your Father, He in the heavens, is perfect.'"

"Perfect as the good God is perfect!" I exclaimed.

"That is our standard," she responded. "We are not to rest short of that."

"But we cannot! You yourself said it, holy Mother, when we were talking of Sister Eudoxia."

"I did, my child. Let us take two more passages from Holy Writ, and see if they cast any light upon it. 'The end of the law is Christ, unto righteousness, to every believer.' 'And ye are in Him complete.'"

"I do not understand them, holy Mother."

"I have heard thee speak, Helena, of thy favourite legend of the two good knights of Greece. What was it that Sir Pythias agreed to do for Sir Damon?"

"To suffer death in his stead, if he did not return home at the appointed time."

"Suppose that Sir Pythias had suffered death before Sir Damon's return, and that when Sir Damon came back, the Lord King had put him to death also: what wouldst thou call that?"

"Oh, that would never have been just!" said I.

"But why? Sir Damon had been sentenced to die."

"Yes, but when another had died for him--Oh, it would be cruelly unfair!"

"In other words, Sir Damon would be reckoned to have died, so far as the law was concerned, in the person of his friend?"

"Exactly," said I.

"And this friend, remember, had voluntarily given his life. Now, this is the point to which I want to bring thee. The death of Sir Pythias would have been reckoned to Sir Damon; and this last would have been accounted to have paid the full penalty to which he was sentenced, and to be thenceforward a free and blameless man."

"Of course," said I. "There could have been no other result."