Part 26 (1/2)
”Sweet love,” he cried, drawing her by the hand that he might meet the radiance of her look-”heart's dearest!”
She did not withhold her lovely eyes from him, but withdrew them from the sunset's mist of gold, and the clouds piled as it were at the gates of heaven, and they seemed to bring back some of the far-off glory with them. Indeed, neither her smile nor she seemed at that moment to be things of earth. She held out her fair, n.o.ble arms, and he sprang to her, and so they stood, side beating against side.
”Yes, love,” she said-”yes, love-and I have prayed, my Gerald, that I may give you sons who shall be men like you. But when I give you women children, I shall pray with all my soul for them-that they may be just and strong and n.o.ble, and life begin for them as it began not for me.”
In the morning of a spring day when the cuckoos cried in the woods, and May blossomed thick, white and pink, in all the hedges, the bells in the grey church-steeple at Camylott rang out a joyous, jangling peal, telling all the village that the heir had been born at the Tower. Children stopped in their play to listen, men at their work in field and barn; good gossips ran out of their cottage door, wiping their arms dry, from their tubs and scrubbing-buckets, their honest red faces broadening into maternal grins.
”Ay, 'tis well over, that means surely,” one said to the other; ”and a happy day has begun for the poor lady-though G.o.d knows she bore herself queenly to the very last, as if she could have carried her burden for another year, and blenched not a bit as other women do. Bless mother and child, say I.”
”And 'tis an heir,” said another. ”She promised us that we should know almost as quick as she did, and commanded old Rowe to ring a peal, and then strike one bell loud between if 'twere a boy, and two if 'twere a girl child. 'Tis a boy, heard you, and 'twas like her wit to invent such a way to tell us.”
In four other villages the chimes rang just as loud and merrily, and the women talked, and blessed her Grace and her young child, and casks of ale were broached, and oxen roasted, and work stopped, and dancers footed it upon the green.
”Surely the new-born thing comes here to happiness,” 'twas said everywhere, ”for never yet was woman loved as is his mother.”
In her stately bed her Grace the d.u.c.h.ess lay, with the face of the Mother Mary, and her man-child drinking from her breast. The duke walked softly up and down, so full of joy that he could not sit still. When he had entered first, it was his wife's self who had sate upright in her bed, and herself laid his son within his arms.
”None other shall lay him there,” she said, ”I have given him to you. He is a great child, but he has not taken from me my strength.”
He was indeed a great child, even at his first hour, of limbs and countenance so n.o.ble that nurses and physicians regarded him amazed. He was the offspring of a great love, of n.o.ble bodies and great souls. Did such powers alone create human beings, the earth would be peopled with a race of giants.
Amid the veiled spring suns.h.i.+ne and the flower-scented silence, broken only by the twittering of birds nesting in the ivy, her Grace lay soft asleep, her son resting on her arm, when Anne stole to look at her and her child. Through the night she had knelt praying in her chamber, and now she knelt again. She kissed the new-born thing's curled rose-leaf hand and the lace frill of his mother's night-rail. She dared not further disturb them.
”Sure G.o.d forgives,” she breathed-”for Christ's sake. He would not give this little tender thing a punishment to bear.”
CHAPTER XXII-Mother Anne
There was no punishment. The tender little creature grew as a blossom grows from bud to fairest bloom. His mother flowered as he, and spent her days in n.o.ble cheris.h.i.+ng of him and tender care. Such motherhood and wifehood as were hers were as fair statues raised to Nature's self.
”Once I thought that I was under ban,” she said to her lord in one of their sweetest hours; ”but I have been given love and a life, and so I know it cannot be. Do I fill all your being, Gerald?”
”All, all!” he cried, ”my sweet, sweet woman.”
”Leave I no longing unfulfilled, no duty undone, to you, dear love, to the world, to human suffering I might aid? I pray Christ with all pa.s.sionate humbleness that I may not.”
”He grants your prayer,” he answered, his eyes moist with wors.h.i.+pping tenderness.
”And this white soul given to me from the outer bounds we know not-it has no stain; and the little human body it wakened to life in-think you that Christ will help me to fold them in love high and pure enough, and teach the human body to do honour to its soul? 'Tis not monkish scorn of itself that I would teach the body; it is so beautiful and n.o.ble a thing, and so full of the power of joy. Surely That which made it-in His own image-would not that it should despise itself and its own wonders, but do them reverence, and rejoice in them n.o.bly, knowing all their seasons and their changes, counting not youth folly, and manhood sinful, or age aught but gentle ripeness pa.s.sing onward? I pray for a great soul, and great wit, and greater power to help this fair human thing to grow, and love, and live.”
These had been born and had rested hid within her when she lay a babe struggling 'neath her dead mother's corpse. Through the darkness of untaught years they had grown but slowly, being so unfitly and unfairly nourished; but Life's sun but falling on her, they seemed to strive to fair fruition with her days.
'Twas not mere love she gave her offspring-for she bore others as years pa.s.sed, until she was the mother of four sons and two girls, children of strength and beauty as noted as her own; she gave them of her constant thought, and an honour of their humanity such as taught them reverence of themselves as of all other human things. Their love for her was such a pa.s.sion as their father bore her. She was the n.o.blest creature that they knew; her beauty, her great unswerving love, her truth, were things bearing to their child eyes the unchangingness of G.o.d's stars in heaven.
”Why is she not the Queen?” a younger one asked his father once, having been to London and seen the Court. ”The Queen is not so beautiful and grand as she, and she could so well reign over the people. She is always just and honourable, and fears nothing.”
From her side Mistress Anne was rarely parted. In her fair retreat at Camylott she had lived a life all undisturbed by outward things. When the children were born strange joy came to her.