Part 4 (2/2)
”Tell me what the angels are like in Heaven, and thou shalt hear then.
She is an angel now--she hath been one these three-and-twenty years.
But methinks there can have been little to change in her face when she blossomed into a cherub, and the wings would unfold themselves from her as by nature. Never a child like her!--no, there never was one. She had bright, dark eyes, wonderful eyes--eyes that her whole soul shone in, and that took in everything which pa.s.sed. She spoke with her eyes; she had no other way. The souls of other children came out of their lips; but she had not spent many months in this lower world, before we saw with bitter apprehension and deep sorrow that G.o.d had sealed her sweet lips with eternal silence. She saw all; she heard nothing; she could never speak. My darling was deaf and dumb.”
”O Aunt Avice!”
”Ay, verily at times I wondered if she were indeed an angel that G.o.d had sent down to earth, for whose pure lips our English was too rough, and our French too rude, and who could only speak the tongue they speak in Heaven. She went back but whence she came; we were not fit company for her. Methinks she was sent to let our earthbound hearts have one glimpse of that upper world; and when her work was done, her Father sent for her back home.
”Though our little Lady could never speak, yet long before we discovered that, we found how lively, and earnest, and intelligent she was. As I told thee, she talked with her eyes. Nothing could be done in her presence but she must see and know all about it. A little pull at my gown would tell me she was there; and then I turned to see the bright eager eyes looking into mine, and asking me as plainly as eyes could ask to let her know all about it. She would never rest till she knew what she wanted. Ay me, those eager eyes look into angels' faces now, and maybe into the face of G.o.d upon the throne.”
”But, Aunt, how could she understand, if she could not hear?”
”G.o.d told her somehow, child. He taught her, not we. We did our best, truly; but our best would have been a poor business, if He had not taken her in hand. Many a time, before I had finished trying to explain something to her, that quick little nod would come which meant, 'I understand.' Then she had certain signs for different things. She made those herself; we never taught them to her. She stroked what she liked, as man would stroke a dog; when she disliked anything, she made a feint of throwing her open hand out from her, as though she were pus.h.i.+ng it away. She had odd little ways of indicating different persons, by something in them which struck her. Master Russell, the Queen's clerk, and keeper of the royal children, used often to have a sprig of mint or thyme in his lips as he went about; her sign for him was a bit of stick or thread between her lips. For the priest, she tolled a bell. For the Lady Beatrice, her sister, who had a little airy way of putting her head on one side when anything vexed her, and my Lord Henry de Lacy, who pouted if he were cross (which he was pretty often)--my little Lady imitated them exactly. The Lady Alianora flourished her hands when she spoke; that was the sign for her. For the Lord King, her father, whose left eyelid drooped over his eye, she pulled her own down. She had some such sign for everybody. She noticed everything.”
”Could she not say one word, Aunt?”
”Yes, she could say three. Verily, sometimes I marvelled if she might not have been taught more; but we knew not how, and how she got hold of those three we could never tell.”
”What were they?”
”They were, 'up,' 'who,' and 'poor.'”
”Well, she could not do much with those.”
”Could she not! 'Who' asked all her questions. It answered for who, what, where, when, how, and why. She went on saying it until we understood and replied to the sense in which she meant it. 'Poor' was the word of emotion; it signified 'I pity you,' 'I love you,' 'I am sorry,' and 'Forgive me.' And sometimes it meant, 'Forgive him,' or 'Don't you feel sorry for her?' And I think 'up' served for everything else.”
”Aunt,” said Bertha softly, ”how did you teach the little Lady to pray?
She could tell her beads, I suppose; but would she know what they meant?”
For Bertha, like everybody else at that time, thought it necessary to keep count of her prayers. Prayer, in her eyes, was not so much communion with G.o.d, as it was a kind of charm which in some unaccountable way brought you good luck.
”Beads would have meant nothing to her but toys,” was Avice's reply.
”The Lady de la Mothe taught her the holy sign”--by which Avice meant the cross--”and led her to the image of blessed Mary, that she might do it before her. But I do not think she ever properly understood that She seemed only to have an idea that it was something she must do when she saw an image; and she did it to the statue of the Lady Queen in the great hall. We could not make her understand that one image was not the same thing as another image. But I fancy she had some idea--strange and dim it might be--of what we meant when we knelt and put our hands together and looked up. I know she did it very often, without telling-- always at night, before she slept. But it was strange that she never went to the holy images at that time; she always seemed to go away from them, and kneel down in a corner. And in her last illness, several times, coming into the chamber, I found her lying with her hands folded in prayer, and her eyes lifted up to Heaven. Perhaps G.o.d Himself told her how to speak to Him. One of the strangest things of all was when the little Lord William died; she was nearly three years old then. She had been very fond of her little brother; he was nearest her age of all her brothers and sisters, though he was almost four years older than herself. She came to me sobbing bitterly, and with her little cry of 'Who? who?' I took it to mean 'What has happened to him?' and I was completely puzzled how to explain it to her. But all at once, while I was beating my brains to think what I could say that would make her comprehend it, she told me herself what I could not tell her. Making the sign for the little Lord who was dead, she laid her head upon her hand, and closed her eyes; and then all at once, with a peculiar grace that I never saw in any child but herself, she lifted her arms, fluttering her fingers like a bird flaps its wings, and gazing up into the sky, while she said, 'Up! up!' in a kind of rapture. And I could only smile and bow my head to the truth which G.o.d had told her.” [See Note 1.]
”But how could she know it?” asked astonished Bertha.
Avice shook her head. ”I cannot explain it; I can only tell what happened. She was always very tender-hearted; she never could bear to see any quarrelling, or cruelty, or injustice. If two of the children strove together, our little Lady would run to them with a face of deep distress, and take a hand of each and draw them together, as though she were begging them to be friends; and if she could not get them to kiss each other, she would kiss first one and then the other. I missed her one day, and, after hunting a long while, I found her in the gallery before a fresco of our Lord upon the Cross. She was stroking it and kissing it, with tears in her eyes; and she turned to me saying, 'Poor!
poor!' Her eyes always filled with tears when she saw the crucifix.
The moon used to interest her exceedingly; she would sit and watch it, and kiss her hand to it. But, dear me! how the time must be getting on!
Jump up, Bertha, and prepare supper.”
Bertha folded up her work and put it aside. She drew one of the high stools between her aunt and herself, and put out upon it the two wooden trenchers and two tin mugs. Going to a corner cupboard, Bertha brought out a few cakes of black bread, which she set on a smaller stool beside the other; and then, lifting a pan upon the fire, she threw into it some pieces of mutton fat. As soon as these were melted, Bertha broke four eggs into them, stirring this indigestible mixture with a wooden thible--an article of which my northern readers will not require a description, but the southern must be told that it is a long flat instrument with which porridge is stirred. For the eggs were not merely fried in the fat, but were beaten up with it, the dish when finished bearing the name of franche-mule. A sprig or two of dried herbs were then shred into the pan, and the whole poured out, half on each of the trenchers. It is more than possible that the extraordinarily rich, incongruous, indigestible dishes wherein our fathers delighted, may have something to do with the weaker digestions of their children. The tin mugs were filled with weak ale from a barrel which stood under the ladder. It was an oddity at that time to drink water.
When supper was finished, Bertha washed the mugs and sc.r.a.ped the trenchers clean (water never touched those), putting them back in their places. She had scarcely ended when a tap was heard at the door.
<script>