Part 8

No one suspected her of these outbursts, for she indulged in them only where she was unobserved. This habit had grown on her since she was a little tot, and her pride had kept her from showing how keenly she felt the shrugs and significant glances of the former companions of her mother. Their prophecies concerning her future were obvious, her own idleness and wilfulness being thrown into high relief by the contrasting industry and self-sacrifice of her cousin Matilda. There had been times when she had tried her best to hate Matilda, who was always being held up to her as a model, but Matilda's own love and admiration for her made it impossible.

So for many years she had alternated between tempestuous fits of determination to fulfil the kind prophecies of her mother's generation--to be out and out wicked and have done with it--and sullen resolutions to take the veil and enter the neighboring convent. The grewsome picture of her mother's waterlogged body floating on the moat had kept her from the one, a certain leer on the Father Confessor's face had kept her from the other. She never explained to any one why she had left off going to confession, for what would have been the use? They would have said that she had inherited her mother's wickedness, so that even saints were tempted by her. She would never be judged as other maids.

Again and again she asked herself why had her mother sinned? It was her refusal to wed either of the two fellows whom her overlord had chosen for her that brought her to the Baron's notice. On seeing her he ceased to insist upon that special prerogative. What right had her mother to shrink from the churls that had been allotted to her? Her sin was so unnecessary that Rose looked on it with bitter impatience. The thick-flowing blood of the rustics had been in her veins; she should have been well content to wed some great bullock of a fellow and bear him countless stolid, flaxen-haired children. What right had she to bring into the world a being with every taste different from those about her, with every nerve tingling with revolt? True, Rose herself felt that she would knife a man before she would mate with one of those great hulks of men who were little above the oxen they drove or the sheep they tended. But she had the right to shudder; gentle blood flowed in her veins just as truly as it did in the proud Baron yonder. Just as much as he, she had a right to feel her heart leap within her at the sight of luxury and daintiness and beauty. How her hands longed to feel the touch of soft furs and velvets and rich stuffs! Oh, again and again she wished that her mother had flung her babe also on the moat.

As she was sitting alone one day underneath the trees, near the highway, she was startled by the approach of a gay cavalcade bringing color and life and laughter into the gloomy woods. First rode the Baron, usually a superb figure on his magnificent coal-black horse, but now a most ridiculous figure with his clothes put on wrong side forward, his hat tilted over his nose, and long streamers of different colored ribands hanging from his beard, down his breast, and along his legs, where also hung numerous tiny bells tinkling with every motion. His horse was decorated as fantastically as its master, and behind him followed two score of lusty fellows decked out in motley liveries of green and yellow and covered with scarves and ribands and laces hung all over with gold. From each of these jangled and dangled countless silvern bells, heightening the din made by the pipers and drummers that followed, playing weird discords like a devil's dance. A number of ladies with their gallants, all masked and gayly costumed, now rode up, all shrieking with laughter.

As the Baron caught sight of Rose standing near the road, gazing at the unwonted sight in open bewilderment, there swept into his eyes that look with which all men greeted her beauty. He whispered a command to one of his lackeys, who instantly seized the girl and conducted her to the Baron, who gazed down on her amazed--for how could it be that he had overlooked such a rare beauty in his vicinity? For the moment he regretted the escapade that made him cut so ridiculous a figure in her eyes.

"Thou must proclaim thyself a follower of my Lord of Misrule," he said, smiling down at her and lifting up her chin with one gauntleted hand. She did not reply, but gazed on the ground in embarrassment, the color going and coming in her cheeks.

"Look, girl," spoke up one of the Baron's companions, "none may encounter us save they wear my Lord's badge," and with a leer, he attempted to fasten a knot of ribands on the girl's kerchief. She made a quick gesture of impatience and stepped back angrily, but at a low word from the Baron she paused, and turned her exquisite profile toward him.

"Wilt refuse my badge?" he asked softly. She turned her face to him and curtsied, answering readily:--

"I need not that to make me a humble servant of your Lordship;" but her lips trembled and the blood was pumping noisily about her ears, and she found she could speak only in a strained whisper.

Some of the ladies clapped their hands at her readiness, and the Baron, with a light laugh, sprang from his horse and pinned on the badge, taking as long to do so as he possibly could, while the others looked on in amusement and made audible comments, even the ladies chuckling over the coarse badinage that was bandied about.

"Two groats for the badge, girl," cried one saucy fellow as the Baron at last reluctantly took his hands from the girl, and stood off in mock admiration of his own handiwork, "two groats!"

"I have no money," exclaimed Rose, sullenly. The interruption had jarred upon her. For a brief space she had fancied herself and the Baron alone in the world. De Leaufort turned angrily upon the fellow. "Who speaks of payment to a comely maid," he demanded.

"Ay, by St. Clara, a beauty like her needs no groat in her pocket, for she carries payment ever in her face," spoke up another fellow, who had been watching the scene with considerable amusement. "I see the end of poor Lillian's reign," he muttered in his beard.

The Baron threw an arm about Rose's waist, and, drawing her to him, pressed a quick hot kiss on her lips. "I am richly paid," he cried, as she sprang from him and bounded off through the woods.

"Richly indeed!" echoed a couple of envious ones.

"And doubtless the treasury is not yet exhausted," laughed one who knew the Baron was not one to let such a beauty lightly slip through his fingers.

For an instant de Leaufort looked ruefully after the girl. She had not seemed to him a girl that would resent a kiss. At a whisper from a companion, however, he smiled, nodded his head, sprang into the saddle, and a moment later nothing but a cloud of dust rose where the gay cavalcade had rested. On they proceeded with a great din and racket, bringing out from every door they passed heads that shook with disapproval over the light-hearted gayety of the rich folks, and their careless misusing of fineries and good clothes, while the poor had to groan and sweat even for such poor rags as they could find to cover their nakedness.

With the queer contradictions of maidenhood, which yearns and spurns all of a breath, Rose fled to her friends only to announce her sudden determination to return to the Bury the very next day. To all their pleas to persuade her to remain, she was obdurate, although a voice deep down within her pleaded their cause with even far greater eloquence than they could command. Indeed, no one could have been more surprised than herself at the sudden resolution. She had passed hours before the castle picturing all sorts of wild, impossible situations with herself as the heroine and the Baron as the hero, and yet, now that something had really happened, she ran away. There was a certain look in the Baron's eyes as his beard had swept across her cheek that told her with unfailing instinct that he would not lightly let her go from him. An exultant subconsciousness told her that, until he found her, there would be no woman in the world for him. And yet she was fleeing from him even as the startled stag at the scent of danger throws back its antlers and leaps through the forest. She questioned her own decision as impatiently as did her friends. She did not quite understand herself. Was there deep down a desire to show her power, to heighten her charm, by giving him a little trouble in finding her? She could not say. She was not sure that she was not playing with her conscience and making a pretence of saving her soul. She knew only that a wild desire to run away possessed her, one too strong to be withstood. She merely obeyed her reigning impulse as she had done all her life. With the morrow a new one might come and then there would be plenty of time to yield to that.

XIV

The day following his interview with Meryl, Annys was obliged to answer an urgent call from the men of a hamlet outside of the See of Ely. These people had refused to pay the tithes due to the Church, seeing that the rector was a man who had never seen those parts, and who had long since rented the church building to a precious couple who conducted there a highly profitable tavern.

Notwithstanding the strong case which the people surely had, the Church prepared to wage a bitter struggle to enforce its rights. For it would never do in the world to admit the principle that the people but paid for service rendered. Indeed, such an admission would end in the bankruptcy of many an entire diocese. The people craved the help and advice of Robert Annys. There was no doubt on which side he would be found. Meryl accompanied him part of the distance on his way to Gloucester to confer with the men of that neighborhood. He had asked for some work to do that would help him forget his keen disappointment and that at the same time would take him from Matilda's presence. As the two men separated, they clasped hands warmly, and Meryl promised to do his utmost to gain strength and courage to take up again his life at the Bury. He was determined, however, not to return until Matilda and the poor priest were wedded.

Directly on the line of the hamlet where Annys was awaited, lay Colchester, in the county of Essex, on the outskirts of which dwelled the wife of the refugee who had been saved by the devotion of the Westels. Annys found her on the point of giving birth to a child, and kept from actual starvation only by the generosity of those who had but little more than she. When she learned from the poor priest that not alone her husband was safe, but that he was earning fair wages, a portion of which Annys bore for her in his wallet, her pinched face brightened. He was strangely touched by her broken murmurs of gratitude; never before had an expectant mother appealed to him in the same way. His heart warmed even toward the three-year-old fellow who peered at him dubiously from his mother's skirts. The knowledge that before long he would take unto himself a wife was a leaven that leavened every thought and every act.

Although he endured great hardship tramping along the highway, with little rest and less food, although he bore with him always the heavy responsibilities he had assumed, nevertheless his fortnight of absence sped by as in a dream. He seemed to move in a new and strange world. His heart leapt within him because he experienced a totally new and more intimate sense of fellowship with the rest of mankind. There was given him a keener and profounder insight into their hearts. Scarce could he keep his eyes from the laborers who returned at nightfall from the fields and swung their tots over their heads. He followed funeral cortèges as they wound over hill and dale with tears dimming his eyes. A new understanding of the agony of separation came upon him. He thought much of his mother, who was but a beautiful memory to him. He wondered where she was buried, and resolved to discover her grave, if possible, and visit it to whisper to her his new-found happiness.

For there had long been growing within him the conviction that the Church could not truly be brought to the people until the clergy became more a part of the people. The clergy could not truly minister to the people until they understood the people, until they shared the same hopes and joys, the same fears and sorrows. The great emotions that come with family life and family affections must be brought back to those that served men. He felt that the very completeness of the self-surrender that had been demanded by the early Fathers of the Church had struck a false note that had rung down the centuries,--the note of a cold egoism and isolation of spirit. With all the strength of his soul he rebelled against the cruel mandate of St. Jerome, which was responsible for much that was abnormal in the lives of the saints:--

"Though your little nephew twine his arms around your neck; though your mother, with dishevelled hair and tearing her robe asunder, point to the breast with which she suckled you; though your father fall down on the threshold before you, pass over your father's body. Fly with tearless eyes to the banner of the cross.... Such chains as these, the love of God and fear of hell can easily break."

This drying up of the commonest sources of affection, how could it spread the love and fellowship which were the essence of Christliness? Even the indomitable believer in celibacy, the great Hildebrand himself, had said:--

"From love to God to show love to one's neighbor ... this I consider more than prayers, fastings, vigils, or other good works."

And what so readily and completely opens the heart to one's neighbor as to live that neighbor's life?

To watch the love-light of motherhood irradiate the features of your wife as her new-born babe is placed within her arms; to watch the shadow of death creep over the tiny form of the little one you adore; in short, to suffer, to know, to weep, to laugh, as others suffer and know, and weep and laugh--that, and that only, is to love.

It was a deep-seated satisfaction to him that love had come to him as he had always prayed for it,--a beautiful, spiritual, uplifting experience. Love, he had always contended, was a holy thing. Had not Jesus used the simile of the bride and the bridegroom to express the love of the religious for her God, of the priest for his Church? Nevertheless, over all the writings of the Fathers and the Saints a false and unhealthful asceticism had spread a morbid view of sexual love. Their pages were soiled by a horror of passion which in itself was a surrender to it. The very violence of their dread, the very vehemence of their agonies, spoke not only of a lack of self-control, but of a pruriency of imagination which would not have been present in a normal man. Gone utterly was the frank cleanness of the Scriptures:--

"For he created all things that they might have being, and the generative powers of the world are healthsome, and there is no poison of destruction in them."

And in its place came a distorted self-consciousness that was carried to absurd extremes. It caused one saint to cover his hands with rags before he would consent to carry his own mother across a bridge--a highly edifying incident which was related with much spiritual gusto by the saint's biographer.

The tortures of St. Anthony, the revelations of St. Augustine, the temptations of St. Benedict, were all to Robert Annys incomprehensible. He had never known his pulse to bound one beat the quicker at the sight of a woman. Women there had been who, stirred by his great beauty, had striven with such poor art as they possessed to awaken desire within him, but he had always put them aside calmly and passed on in the work of the Lord.

On his return he lost no time in seeking out Matilda. This time he needed no one to interpret the joy that surged up into her face as she looked on him. He smiled tenderly on her as she told him of her doings during his absence, how she had nursed a girl through a terrible fever, how she had read the Gospel to many eager souls, how she had taught an old man his letters, how she had progressed with her grandmother's lessons. Then when she paused, and asked shyly, "Did thy pupil well?" he came close to her and took her hand.

"Well? Why, I could not have done half so well myself. Ah, I need thee, I need thee always. What sayst thou? Canst take me, a poor priest with no better lot to offer thee than that which my master hath enjoined upon me?"

"I shall love thee the better for it," she whispered.

"It will be no easy life. I will cherish thee dearly, yet never can I set thy desires above the call of duty," he said with a certain austereness, as if, even then, he was replying to the charges of the Hierarchy.

"I wish to help thee, not to hinder thee," was her instant reply. And in her face were a faith and an enthusiasm that would never waver.

"Ah, of a truth!" he said, "had Paul known thee, never would he have said a married man is careful only for the things of this world. Surely now I shall belong more truly than ever to the Lord."

He bent over her and kissed her tenderly on her forehead. Her head, with its smooth, orderly golden braids, drooped shyly on to his shoulder, and her heart beat against his. His kiss was such as a brother bestows on a beloved sister, but her lips were too pure to know their loss.

He held her to him in sweet content at having found the wife he had dreamed of. He knew nothing of the love that burns and scorches, instead of soothing, and as he felt the deep peace of being in her presence and feeling her love like a benediction rest upon him, he marvelled yet again, as so often he had done in the past, how the Fathers of the Church could so have maligned the love of man for woman.

His vision stretched far along the future, seeing only peace in his life, and the crowning joy of a woman's touch which blunders not.

"The Lord hath been very gracious unto me," he said simply, looking down on her.

Then, at the sound of a light laugh, he turned and met the eyes of Rose Westel.

XV

She made a beautiful picture as she stood there with an inward tumult chasing the rich blood in and out her cheeks, and in her eyes a world of passion and rebellion. Always beautiful, there was a subtle tremulous excitement about her now which, as she gazed boldly at the young poor priest, leapt into his veins as flames leap into fagots. She was trembling from a revelation of her own self, and she had flown home in a wild mood, in which fear and recklessness and a certain exhilaration from which she could not escape, all had their part.

She possessed a figure that would have graced the more flowing robes of the gentles had they been permitted her, yet her skirt of bright green was hardly as scant as befitted her station in life. Her tight-fitting, sleeveless kirtle was of a dull brown, for she scorned the gown of one color which was commanded by law. Above the kirtle shone her bare, white neck. She wore about her waist a girdle of gold which some great lady had once bestowed upon her, refusing to give it up even in the face of Parliament, which of late had protested vigorously against the extravagance of those who could not afford it, forbidding to any but a lady of high degree a girdle other than of plain linen.

From her quick run, the long red cap which should have covered her ears and neck had become disarranged, revealing a bit of her hair which was caught up in a net of wide meshes and in the sunlight shone like burnished mahogany. Her large hazel eyes had glints of brilliant gold at times, her lips were as the scarlet of frost-touched maples. There was about her a wonderful glow of vitality. Looking on her, a rush of life swept over one as a rush of salt-laden air sweeps over one who stands by the sea. Her coloring was not like that of any other woman. Merely to describe it as blonde or brunette would be like dipping one's brush into a palette of dull browns to paint the sunset. There was an indescribable brilliancy about her that made one think of an October day. She was the incarnation of the Autumn--a living, warm, radiant Autumn; not at all the Autumn of death and decay, of sobbing winds and whirling leaves, but a vivid, glowing Autumn, with all its own glory of color, and yet with the freshness and looking-future-ward of the Spring.

She had been fleeing from a forester who had been sent in quest of her by the Baron de Leaufort. He, inflamed by her beauty, set out on a bit of love-making on his own account. Not a bad-looking fellow he was in his way, his great figure set off splendidly by his livery of bright green, with the baudrick of cardinal tied about his shoulders and holding his horn. His sword and buckler hung to one side, and his mighty bow he bore in his hand, the brilliant peacock feathers of his arrows peeping from his full quiver. She had had no eye, however, for his charms, for her mind was full of the consciousness that the Baron had sent after her. But he at her side thought that not even the Lady Augusta, the Baron's beautiful sister, could compare with this rustic beauty, not my lady with her wimple of delicate sheer white stuff and her flowing robes of royal crimson embroidered with gold and outlined in ermine. Surely his Lordship had women in plenty to console himself with, and besides, he could say he had not been able to find her.

"By our Lady," he cried, "the Baron should know enough not to send another hunting for him and the game so worth the having. Nay, 'tis not in human nature to expect me to bag you for him and not have a wee taste for myself."

Rose shrank from his touch. "Nay, be not too proud, little one. Big Harry hath met many a fine lady who hath not shrunk from his advances. A strapping fellow like myself, not so bad-looking, oft hath his uses not indented in the bond to his overlord. 'Tis easily accomplished if thou wilt come with me as my sweetheart; 'tis easy to tell the Baron that in some way thou hast slipped through his fingers and cannot be found. By to-morrow he'll have a dozen making him forget all about thee."

She suddenly was awake to his meaning. "Have a care, have a care, fellow," she cried. "This impudence shall not go unreported, I promise thee, and thine ears shall ring for it."