Part 11 (1/2)
”What is all this fuss about?” exclaimed her displeased mistress. ”I never heard such ado about nothing.”
Her displeasure, usually feared above all things, was nothing to Clarice in that terrible instant. She sobbed forth that she loved elsewhere-- she was already troth-plight.
”Nonsense!” said the Countess, sharply. ”What business hadst thou with such foolery, unknown to me? All maidens are wed by orders from their superiors. Why shouldst thou be an exception?”
”Oh, have you no compa.s.sion?” cried poor Clarice, in her agony. ”Lady, did you never love?”
All present were intently watching the face of the Countess, in the hope of seeing some sign of relenting. But when this question was asked, the stern lips grew more set and stern than ever, and something like fire flashed out of the usually cold blue-grey eyes.
”Who--I?” she exclaimed. ”Thanks be to all the saints right verily, nay. I never had ado with any such disgraceful folly. From mine earliest years I have ever desired to be an holy sister, and never to see a man's face. Get up, girl; it is of no use to kneel to me. There was no kindness shown to me; my wishes were never considered; why should thine be? I was made to array myself for my bridal, to the very uprooting and destruction of all that I most loved and desired. Ah! if my Lord and father had lived, it would not have been so; he always encouraged my vocation. He said love was unhappy, and I thought it was scandalous. No, Clarice; I have no compa.s.sion upon lovers. There never ought to be any such thing. Let it be as I have said.”
And away stalked the Countess, looking more grey, square, and angular than ever.
Note 1. De La Moor is the only chronicler in whose pages it is possible to recognise the Edward of the letter-book, in which all his letters are copied for the thirty-third year of his father's reign--1304-5.
Note 2. Barnes's Edward the Third. I must in honesty confess that I have taken the liberty of smoothing Dr Barnes's somewhat rugged translation.
Note 3. A carpet-knight was one whose heroism lay more in rhetorical visions addressed to his partner in the intervals of dancing than in hard blows given and taken in the field.
CHAPTER SIX.
DESTROYED BY THE HURRICANE.
”Our plans may be disjointed, But we may calmly rest: What G.o.d has once appointed Is better than our best.”--Frances Ridley Havergal.
The Countess left Clarice prostrate on the ground, sobbing as if her heart would break--Olympias feebly trying to raise and soothe her, Roisia looking half-stunned, and Felicia palpably amused by the scene.
”Thou hadst better get up, child,” said Diana, in a tone divided between constraint and pity. ”It will do thee no good to lie there. We shall all have to put up with the same thing in our turn. I haven't got the man I should have chosen; but I suppose it won't matter a hundred years hence.”
”I am not so sure of that,” said Roisia, in a low voice.
”Oh, thou art disappointed, I know,” said Diana. ”I would hand Fulk over to thee with pleasure, if I could. I don't want him. But I suppose he will do as well as another, and I shall take care to be mistress. It is something to be married--to anybody.”
”It is everything to be married to the right man,” said Roisia; ”but it is something very awful to be married to the wrong one.”
”Oh, one soon gets over that,” was Diana's answer. ”So long as you can have your own way, I don't see that anything signifies much. I shall not admire myself in my wedding-dress any the less because my squire is not exactly the one I hoped it might be.”
”Diana, I don't understand thee,” responded Roisia. ”What does it matter, I should say, having thine own way in little nothings so long as thou art not to have it in the one thing for which thou really carest?
Thou dost not mean to say that a velvet gown would console thee for breaking thy heart?”
”But I do,” said Diana. ”I must be a countess before I could wear velvet; and I would marry any man in the world who would make me a countess.”
Mistress Underdone, who had lifted up Clarice, and was holding her in her arms, petting her into calmness as she would a baby, now thought fit to interpose.
”My maids,” she said, ”there are women who have lost their hearts, and there are women who were born without any. The former case has the more suffering, yet methinks the latter is really the more pitiable.”
”Well, I think those people pitiable enough who let their hearts break their sleep and interfere with their appet.i.tes,” replied Diana. ”I have got over my disappointment already; and Clarice will be a simpleton if she do not.”
”I expect Clarice and I will be simpletons,” said Roisia, quietly.