Part 53 (1/2)
”DIEU LA VOULU.”
”Over himself and his own heart's complaining Victorious still.”
The bells were pealing merrily for the marriage of Clare Avery--I beg her pardon--of Clare Tremayne; and the wedding party were seated at breakfast in the great hall at Enville Court.
”The bridesmaids be well-looking,” said Lady Enville, behind her fan, to Sir Piers Feversham, who was her next neighbour,--for Sir Piers and Lucrece had come to the wedding--”and I do hear Mistress Penelope Travis--she of them that is nearest--is like to be the next bride of our vicinage.”
”Say you so?” responded Sir Piers. ”I do desire all happiness be with her. But there is one of yonder maids for whom in very deed I feel compa.s.sion, and it is Mistress Lysken Barnevelt. Her May is well-nigh over, and no bells be ringing for her. Poor maiden!”
”Go to, now, what dolts be men!” quoth Mistress Rachel Enville, addressing herself, to all appearance, to the dish of flummery which stood before her. ”They think, poor misconceiving companions! that we be all a-dying for them. That's a man's notion. Moreover, they take it that 'tis the one end and aim of every woman in the world to be wed.
That's a man's notion, again. And belike they fancy, poor patches! that when she striketh thirty years on the bell, any woman will wed any man that will but take compa.s.sion to ask her. That caps all their notions.
(Thou shalt right seldom hear a woman to make no such a blunder. They know better.) Poor blockheads!--as if we could not be useful nor happy without _them_! Lysken Barnevelt and Rachel Enville, at the least, be not fools enough to think it.”
”Neither is the Queen's Majesty, my mistress,” observed Sir Piers, greatly amused.
”Who e'er said the Queen's Majesty were a fool?” demanded Rachel bluntly. ”She is a woman, and no man--Heaven be praised for all His mercies!”
”Yet if no man were,” pursued Sir Piers, ”methinks you gentlewomen should be but ill bestead.”
”Oh, should we so?” retorted Rachel. ”Look you, women make no wars, nor serve therein: nor women be no lawyers, to set folk by the ears: nor women write not great tomes of controversy, wherein they curse the one the other because Nell loveth a white gown, and Bess would have a black.
Is the Devil a woman? Answer me that, I pray you.”
”Do women make no wars?” laughed Sir Piers. ”What! with Helen of Troy, and--”
”Good lack, my master!--and what ill had Helen's fair face wrought in all this world, had there been no dolts of men to be beguilen thereby?”
was Rachel's instant response.
Sir Piers made a hasty retreat from that part of the field.
”But, my mistress, though the Devil be no woman, yet was the woman the first to be deceived by him.”
”Like enough!” snapped Rachel. ”She sinned not open-eyed, as did Adam.
She trusted a man-devil, like too many of her daughters sithence, and she and they alike have found bitter cause to rue the day they did it.”
Sir Piers prudently discovered that Lady Enville was asking him a question, and let Rachel alone thereafter.
Ay, Lysken Barnevelt adopted from choice the life to which Clare had been only willing to resign herself because she thought it was the Father's will. It amused Lysken to hear people pity her as one who had failed to win the woman's aim in life. To have failed to obtain what she had never sought, and did not want, was in Lysken's eyes an easily endurable affliction. The world was her home, while she pa.s.sed through it on her journey to the better Home: and all G.o.d's family were her brethren or her children. The two sisters from Enville Court were both happy and useful in their corners of the great harvest-field; but she was the happiest, and the best loved, and when G.o.d called her the most missed of all--this solitary Lysken. Distinguished by no unusual habit, fettered by no unnatural vow, she went her quiet, peaceful, blessed way--a nun of the Order of Providence, for ever.
And what was the fate of Lady Enville?
Just what is generally the fate of women of her type. They pa.s.s through life making themselves vastly comfortable, and those around them vastly uncomfortable, and then ”depart without being desired.” They are never missed--otherwise than as a piece of furniture might be missed. To such women the whole world is but a platform for the exhibition and glorification of the Great Me: and the persons in it are units with whom the Great Me deigns--or does not deign--to a.s.sociate. Happy are those few of them who awake, on this side of the dread tribunal, to the knowledge that in reality this Great Me is a very little me indeed, yet a soul that can be saved, and that may be lost.
And Rachel?--Ah, Rachel was missed when she went on the inevitable journey. The house was not the same without her. She had been like a fresh breeze blowing through it,--perhaps a little sharp at times, but always wholesome. Those among whom she had dwelt never realised all she had been to them, nor all the love they had borne to her, until they could tell her of it no more.
The winter of 1602 had come, and on the ground in Devons.h.i.+re the snow lay deep. The trees, thickly planted all round Umberleigh, drooped with the white weight; and a keen North wind groaned among the branches. All was gloomy and chill outside.
And inside, all was gloomy and mournful too, for a soul was in departing. The ripe fruit that had tarried so late on the old tree, was shaken down at last. Softly and tenderly, the Lady Elizabeth, the young wife of Sir Robert Ba.s.set, was ministering to the last earthly needs of Philippa the aged, the sister of her husband's grandfather. [Note 1.]
”'Tis high time, Bess, child!” whispered the dying woman, true to her character to the last. ”I must have been due on the roll of Death these thirty years. I began to marvel if he had forgot me. And I am going Home, child. Thank G.o.d, I am going Home!
”They are are all safe yonder, Bess--Arthur, and Nell [Wife of Sir Arthur Ba.s.set], and little Honor, and thy little lad [Arthur, who died in infancy], and Jack, and Frances--my darling sister!--and George, and Kate, and Nan. I am a.s.sured of them, all. There be James and Mall,-- well, I am not so sure of them. Would G.o.d I were! He knoweth.