Part 24 (2/2)

”My wife!” he said-”so soon my wife and all my own until life's end.”

”Nay, nay,” she cried, her cheek pressed to his own, ”through all eternity, for Love's life knows no end.”

As it had seemed to her poor lord who had died, so it seemed to this man who lived and so wors.h.i.+pped her-that the wonder of her sweetness was a thing to marvel at with pa.s.sionate reverence. Being a man of greater mind and poetic imagination than Dunstanwolde, and being himself adored by her, as that poor gentleman had not had the good fortune to be, he had ten thousand-fold the power and reason to see the tender radiance of her. As she was taller than other women, so her love seemed higher and greater, and as free from any touch of earthly poverty of feeling as her beauty was from any flaw. In it there could be no doubt, no pride; it could be bounded by no limit, measured by no rule, its depths sounded by no plummet.

His very soul was touched by her great longing to give to him the feeling, and to feel herself, that from the hour that she had become his, her past life was a thing blotted out.

”I am a new created thing,” she said; ”until you called me 'Love' I had no life! All before was darkness. 'Twas you, my Gerald, who said, 'Let there be light, and there was light.'”

”Hush, hush, sweet love,” he said. ”Your words would make me too near G.o.d's self.”

”Sure Love is G.o.d,” she cried, her hands upon his shoulders, her face uplifted. ”What else? Love we know; Love we wors.h.i.+p and kneel to; Love conquers us and gives us Heaven. Until I knew it, I believed naught. Now I kneel each night and pray, and pray, but to be pardoned and made worthy.”

Never before, it was true, had she knelt and prayed, but from this time no nun in her convent knelt oftener or prayed more ardently, and her prayer was ever that the past might be forgiven her, the future blessed, and she taught how to so live that there should be no faintest shadow in the years to come.

”I know not What is above me,” she said. ”I cannot lie and say I love It and believe, but if there is aught, sure It must be a power which is great, else had the world not been so strange a thing, and I-and those who live in it-and if He made us, He must know He is to blame when He has made us weak or evil. And He must understand why we have been so made, and when we throw ourselves into the dust before Him, and pray for help and pardon, surely-surely He will lend an ear! We know naught, we have been told naught; we have but an old book which has been handed down through strange hands and strange tongues, and may be but poor history. We have so little, and we are threatened so; but for love's sake I will pray the poor prayers we are given, and for love's sake there is no dust too low for me to lie in while I plead.”

This was the strange truth-though 'twas not so strange if the world feared not to admit such things-that through her Gerald, who was but n.o.ble and high-souled man, she was led to bow before G.o.d's throne as the humblest and holiest saint bows, though she had not learned belief and only had learned love.

”But life lasts so short a while,” she said to Osmonde. ”It seems so short when it is spent in such joy as this; and when the day comes-for, oh! Gerald, my soul sees it already-when the day comes that I kneel by your bedside and see your eyes close, or you kneel by mine, it must be that the one who waits behind shall know the parting is not all.”

”It could not be all, beloved,” Osmonde said. ”Love is sure, eternal.”

Often in these blissful hours her way was almost like a child's, she was so tender and so clinging. At times her beauteous, great eyes were full of an imploring which made them seem soft with tears, and thus they were now as she looked up at him.

”I will do all I can,” she said. ”I will obey every law, I will pray often and give alms, and strive to be dutiful and-holy, that in the end He will not thrust me from you; that I may stay near-even in the lowest place, even in the lowest-that I may see your face and know that you see mine. We are so in His power, He can do aught with us; but I will so obey Him and so pray that He will let me in.”

To Anne she went with curious humility, questioning her as to her religious duties and beliefs, asking her what books she read, and what services she attended.

”All your life you have been a religious woman,” she said. ”I used to think it folly, but now-”

”But now-” said Anne.

”I know not what to think,” she answered. ”I would learn.”

But when she listened to Anne's simple homilies, and read her weighty sermons, they but made her restless and unsatisfied.

”Nay, 'tis not that,” she said one day, with a deep sigh. ”'Tis more than that; 'tis deeper, and greater, and your sermons do not hold it. They but set my brain to questioning and rebellion.”

But a short time elapsed before the marriage was solemnised, and such a wedding the world of fas.h.i.+on had not taken part in for years, 'twas said. Royalty honoured it; the greatest of the land were proud to count themselves among the guests; the retainers, messengers, and company of the two great houses were so numerous that in the west end of the town the streets wore indeed quite a festal air, with the pa.s.sing to and fro of servants and gentlefolk with favours upon their arms.

'Twas to the Tower of Camylott, the most beautiful and remote of the bridegroom's several notable seats, that they removed their household, when the irksomeness of the extended ceremonies and entertainments were over-for these they were of too distinguished rank to curtail as lesser personages might have done. But when all things were over, the stately town houses closed, and their equipages rolled out beyond the sight of town into the country roads, the great duke and his great d.u.c.h.ess sat hand in hand, gazing into each other's eyes with as simple and ardent a joy as they had been but young 'prentice and country maid, flying to hide from the world their love.

”There is no other woman who is so like a queen,” Osmonde said, with tenderest smiling. ”And yet your eyes wear a look so young in these days that they are like a child's. In all their beauty, I have never seen them so before.”

<script>