“household names, that used to flutter
through your laughter unawares,—
god’s divine name ye can utter
with less trembling, in your prayers.”
elizabeth b. browning.
philippa sat down again with the book in her hand. her mood had changed suddenly at the sight of the text, which she instantly guessed to be the original of her well-remembered device.
“i need not go yet,” she said, “unless i weary you, mother.”
“i am never wearied of the master’s work,” answered the low voice.
lady sergeaux opened the door of the cell.
“lena and oliver,” she called, “you can return to the convent, and come hither for me again ere the dusk falleth. i shall abide a season with this holy mother.”
“but your ladyship will ere that be faint for hunger,” objected lena.
“no,—i will take care of that,” replied the grey lady, ere philippa could answer.
lena louted, and departed with oliver, and her mistress again closed the door of the cell. the grey lady set bread before her, and honey, with a cup of milk, bidding her eat.
“thank you, mother, but i am not hungry yet,” said philippa.
“you ought to be. you had better eat,” was the quiet answer.
and quiet as the voice was, it had a tone of authority which philippa involuntarily and unconsciously obeyed. and while she ate, her hostess in her turn became the questioner.
“are you a knight’s wife?”
“i am the wife of sir richard sergeaux, a knight of cornwall,” said philippa. “my lord is away in gascony, in the train of the earl of arundel, who accompanies the duke of lancaster, at present governor of those parts. while he is absent, i hope to be able to make my salvation in retreat, and to quiet my conscience.”
the grey lady made no reply. philippa almost expected her to ask if her conscience were quiet, or how much of her salvation she had made. guy of ashridge, she thought, would have preached a sermon on that text. but no answer came from the veiled figure, only her head drooped upon her hand as if she were tired.
“now i am wearying you,” said philippa reproachfully. “i ought to have gone when i first thought thereof.”
“no,” said the grey lady.
her voice, if possible, was even softer than before, but philippa could not avoid detecting in it a cadence of pain so intense that she began to wonder if she were ill, or what portion of her speech could possibly have caused it.
“are you ill, mother?” she asked compassionately.
the eremitess lifted her head; and her voice was again calm.
“i thank you,—no. let us not speak of ourselves, but of god.”
“mother, i wish to ask you something,” said philippa rather doubtfully, for she did not wish to pain her again, yet she deemed her coming question necessary.
“ask what you will, lady de sergeaux.”
there was no sad cadence now in the gentle voice.
“i desire to know—for so only can you really help me—if you know yourself what it is to be unloved.”
once more philippa saw the grey veil tremble.
“i know it—well.” but the words were uttered scarcely above a whisper.
“i meant to ask you that at first, and we name upon another subject. but i am satisfied if you know it. and now tell me, how may any be content under such a trial? how may a weary, thirsting heart, come to drink of that water which he that drinketh shall thirst no more? mother, all my life i have been drinking of many wells, but i never yet came to this well. ‘ancor soyf j’ay:’ tell me how i must labour, where i must go, to find that well whereof the drinker
“‘jamays soyf n’aura
a l’éternité’?”
“who taught you those lines?” asked the eremitess quickly.
“i found them in the device of a jewel,” replied philippa.
“strange!” said the recluse; but she did not explain why she thought it so. “lady, the living water is the gift of god; or rather, it is god. and the heart of man was never meant to be satisfied with anything beneath god.”
“but the heart of woman, at least,” said philippa, “for i am not a man—is often satisfied with things beneath god.”
“it often rests in them,” said the grey lady; “but i doubt whether it is satisfied. that is a strong word. are you?”
“i am most unsatisfied,” answered philippa; “otherwise i had not come to you. i want rest.”
“and yet christ hath been saying all your life, to you, as to others,—‘come unto me, all ye that travail and are weary laden, and i will give you rest.’”
“he never gave it me.”
“because you never came for it.”
“i wonder if he can give it,” said philippa, sighing.
“trust me that he can. i never knew it till i came to him.”
“but are you at rest? you scarcely looked so just now.”
“at rest,” said the grey lady, “except when a breeze of earth stirs the soul which should be soaring above earth—when the dreams of earth come like a thick curtain between that soul and the hope of that heaven—as it was just now.”
“then you are not exempt from that?”
“in coming to christ for rest, we do not leave our human hearts and our human infirmities behind us—assuredly not.”
“then do you think it wrong to desire to beloved?”
“not wrong to desire christ’s love.”
“but to desire the love of some human being, or of any human being?”
the eremitess paused an instant before she answered.
“i should condemn myself if i said so,” she replied in a low tone, the sad cadence returning to her voice. “i must leave that with god. he hath undertaken to purge me from sin, and he knows what is sin. if that be so, he will purge me from it. i have put myself in his hands, to be dealt with as pleaseth him; and my physician will give me the medicines which he seeth me to need. let me counsel you to do the same.”
“yet what pleaseth him might not please me.”
“it would be strange if it did.”
“why?” said philippa.
“because it is your nature to love sin, and it is his nature to love holiness. and what we love, we become. he that loveth sin must needs be a sinner.”
“i do not think i love sin,” rejoined philippa, rather offended.
“that is because you cannot see yourself.”
just what guy of ashridge had told her; but not more palatable now than it had been then.
“what is sin?” asked the grey lady.
philippa was ready with a list—of sins which she felt certain she had not committed.
“give me leave to add one,” said the eremitess. “pride is sin; nay, it is the abominable sin which god hateth. and is there no pride in you, lady de sergeaux? you tell me you cannot forgive your own father. now i know nothing of you, nor of him; but if you could see yourself as you stand in god’s sight—whatever it be that he hath done—you would know yourself to be as black a sinner as he. where, then, is your superiority? you have as much need to be forgiven.”
“but i have not!” cried philippa, in no dulcet tones, her annoyance getting the better of her civility. “i never was a murderer! i never turned coldly away from one that loved me—for none ever did love me. i never crushed a loving, faithful heart down into the dust. i never brought a child up like a stranger. i never—stay, i will go no further into the catalogue. but i know i am not such a sinner as he—nay, i am not to be compared to him.”
“and have you,” asked the grey lady, very gently, “turned no cold ear to the loving voice of christ? have you not kept far away from the heavenly father? have you not grieved the holy spirit of god? may it not be said to you, as our lord said to the jews of old time,—‘ye will not come to me, that ye might have life’?”
it was only what guy of ashridge had said before. but this time there seemed to be a power with the words which had not gone with his. philippa was silent. she had no answer to make.
“you are right,” she said after a long pause. “i have done all this; but i never saw it before. mother, the next time you are at the holy mass, will you pray for me?”
“why wait till then?” was the rejoinder. “let us tell him so now.”
and, surprised as she was at the proposal, philippa knelt down.
“thank you, and the holy saints bless you,” she said, as she rose. “now i must go; and i hear lena’s voice without. but ere i depart, may i ask you one thing?”
“anything.”
“what could i possibly have said that pained you? for that something did pain you i am sure. i am sorry for it, whatever it may have been.”
the soft voice resumed its troubled tone.
“it was only,” said the grey lady, “that you uttered a name which has not been named in mine hearing for twenty-seven years: you told me where, and doing what, was one of whom and of whose doings i had thought never to hear any more. one, of whom i try never to think, save when i am praying for him, or in the night when i am alone with god, and can ask him to pardon me if i sin.”
“but whom did i name?” said philippa, in an astonished tone. “have i spoken of any but of my husband? do you know him?”
“i have never heard of him before to-day, nor of you.”
“i think i did mention the duke of lancaster.”
a shake of the head negatived this suggestion.
“well, i named none else,” pursued philippa, “saving the earl of arundel; and you cannot know him.”
even then she felt an intense repugnance to saying, “my father.” but, much to her surprise, the grey lady slowly bowed her head.
“and in what manner,” began philippa, “can you know—”
but before she uttered another word, a suspicion which almost terrified her began to steal over her. she threw herself on her knees at the feet of the grey lady, and grasped her arm tightly.
“all the holy saints have mercy upon us!—are you isabel la despenser?”
it seemed an hour to philippa ere the answer came. and it came in a tone so low and quivering that she only just heard it.
“i was.”
and then a great cry of mingled joy and anguish rang through the lonely cell.
“mother! mine own mother! i am philippa fitzalan!”
there was no cry from isabel. she only held out her arms; and in an embrace as close and tender as that with which they had parted, the long-separated mother and daughter met.
