The Well in the Desert Part 3

Agnes pointed to the window of the opposite turret, where the tiring-women slept, and outside of which was hung a luckless lark in a small wicker cage.

"Is his lot sweet, Lady?"

"I trow not, in good sooth," said Philippa; "but his is like mine."

"I cry you mercy," answered the lavender, shaking her head. "He hath known freedom, and light, and air, and song. That was her lot--not yours, Lady."

Philippa continued to watch the lark. His poor caged wings were beating vainly against the wicker-work, until he wearily gave up the attempt, and sat quietly on the perch, drooping his tired head.

"He is not satisfied," resumed Agnes in a low tone. "He is only weary.

He is not happy--only too worn-out to care for happiness. Ah, holy Virgin! how many of us women are so! And she was wont to say that there was happiness in this life, yet not in this world. It lay, she said, in that other world above, where G.o.d sitteth; and if we would ask for Him that was meant by the better water, it would come and dwell in our hearts along with Him. Our sweet Lady help us! we seem to have missed it somehow."

"I have, at any rate," whispered Philippa, her eyes fixed dreamily on the weary lark.

CHAPTER THREE.

GUY OF ASHRIDGE.

"For merit lives from man to man, And not from man, O Lord, to Thee."

Tennyson.

Not until the evening before her marriage did Philippa learn the name of her new master. The Earl's choice, she was then informed, had fallen on Sir Richard Sergeaux, a knight of Cornwall, who would receive divers manors with the hand of the eldest daughter of Arundel. Philippa was, however, not told that Sir Richard was expected to pay for the grants and the alliance in extremely hard cash.

For to the lofty position of eldest daughter of Arundel (for that morning only) Philippa, to her intense surprise, found herself suddenly lifted. She was robed in cloth of silver; her hair flowed from beneath a jewelled golden fillet; her neck was encircled by rubies, and a ruby and pearl girdle clasped her waist. She felt all the time as though she were dreaming, especially when the Lady Alianora herself superintended her arraying, and even condescended to remark that "the Lady Philippa did not look so very unseemly after all."

Not least among the points which astonished her was the resumption of her t.i.tle. She did not know that this had formed a part of the bargain with Sir Richard, who had proved impracticable on harder terms. He did not mind purchasing the eldest daughter of Arundel at the high price set upon her; but he gave the Earl distinctly to understand that if he were merely selling a Mistress Philippa, there must be a considerable discount.

When the ceremony and the wedding festivities were over, and her palfrey was standing ready at the door, Philippa timidly entered the banqueting-hall, to ask--for the first and last time--her father's blessing. He was conversing with the Earl of Kent, the bridegroom of Alesia, concerning the merits of certain hawks recently purchased; and near him, at her embroidery-frame, sat the Countess Alianora.

Philippa knelt first to her.

"Farewell, Philippa!" said the Countess, in a rather kinder tone than usual. "The saints be with thee."

Then she turned to the only relative she had.

Earl Richard just permitted his jewelled fingers to touch Philippa's velvet hood, saying carelessly,--"Our Lady keep thee!--I cry you mercy, fair son; the lesser tercel is far stronger on the wing."

As Philippa rose, Sir Richard Sergeaux took her hand and led her away.

So she mounted her palfrey, and rode away from Arundel Castle. There were only two things she was sorry to leave--Agnes, because she might have told her more about her mother,--and the grave, in the Priory churchyard below, of the baby Lady Alianora--the little sister who never grew up to tyrannise over her.

It was a long journey ere they reached Kilquyt Manor, and Philippa had time to make the acquaintance of her new owner. He was about her own age, and so far as she could at first judge, a reasonably good-tempered man. The first discovery she made was that he was rather proud of her.

Of Philippa the daughter of Arundel, of course, not of Philippa the woman: but it was so new to be reckoned anything or anybody--so strange to think that somebody was proud of her--that Philippa enjoyed the knowledge. As to his loving her, or her loving him, these were ideas that never entered the minds of either.

So at first Philippa found her married life a pleasant change. She was now at the head, instead of being under the feet of every one else; and her experience of Sir Richard gave her the impression at the outset that he would not prove a hard master. Nor did he, strictly speaking; but on further acquaintance he proved a very trying one. His temper was not of the stormy kind that reigned at Arundel, which had hitherto been Philippa's only idea of a bad temper: but he was a perpetual grumbler, and the slightest temporary discomfort or vexation would overcast her sky with conjugal clouds for the rest of the day. The least stone in his path was treated as a gigantic mountain; the narrowest brooklet as an unfathomable sea. And gradually--she scarcely knew how or when--the old weary discomfort crept back over Philippa's heart, the old unsatisfied longing for the love that no one gave. Her bower at Kilquyt was no more strewn with roses than her turret-chamber at Arundel. She found that "On change du ciel--l'on ne change point de soi." The damask robes and caparisoned palfreys, which her husband did not grudge to her as her father had done, proved utterly unsatisfying to the misunderstood cravings of her immortal soul. She did not herself comprehend why she was not happier. She knew not the nature of the thirst which was upon her, which she was trying in vain to quench at the broken cisterns within her reach. Drinking of this water, she thirsted again; and she had not yet found the way to the Well of the Living Water.

About seven years after her marriage, Philippa stood one day at the gate of her manor. It was a beautiful June morning--just such another as that one which "had failed her hope" at the gate of Arundel Castle, thirty years before. Sir Richard had ridden away on his road to London, whence he was summoned to join his feudal lord, the Earl, and Lady Sergeaux stood looking after him in her old dreamy fas.h.i.+on, though half-an-hour had almost pa.s.sed since she had caught sight of the last waving of his nodding plume through the trees. He had left her a legacy of discomfort, for his spurs had been regilded, not at all to his mind, and he had been growling over them ever since the occurrence, "Dame, have you a draught of cold water to bestow on a weary brother?"

Philippa started suddenly when the question reached her ear.

He who asked it was a monk in the habit of the Dominican Order, and very worn and weary he looked. Lady Sergeaux called for one of her women, and supplied him with the water which he sorely needed, as was manifest from the eager avidity with which he drank. When he had given back the goblet, and the woman was gone, the monk turned towards Philippa, and uttered words which astonished her no little.

"'Quy de cette eaw boyra Ancor soyf aura; Mays quy de l'eaw boyra Que moy luy donneray, Jamays soyf n'aura A l'eternite.'"

"You know that, brother?" she said breathlessly.

"Do you, Lady?" asked the monk--as Philippa felt, with a deeper than the merely literal meaning.

"I know the 'ancor soyf aura,'" she said, mournfully; "I have not reached beyond that."

"Then did you ask, and He did _not_ give?" inquired the stranger.

"No--I never asked, for--" she was going on to add, "I never knew where to ask."

"Then 'tis little marvel you never had, Lady," answered the monk.

"But how to ask?--whom to ask? There may be the Well, but where is the way?"

"How to ask, Lady? As I asked you but now for that lower, poorer water, whereof whosoever drinketh shall thirst again. Whom to ask? Be there more G.o.ds in Heaven than one? Ask the Master, not the servants. And where is the way? It was made on the red rood, thirteen hundred years ago, when 'one of the soldiers with a spear pierced His side, and forthwith came thereout blood and water.' Over that stream of blood is the way to the Well of Living Water."

"I do not fully understand you," returned Philippa.

"You look weary, Lady," said the monk, changing his tone.

"I am weary," she answered; "wearier than you--in one sense."

"Ay, wearier than I," he replied; "for I have been to the Well, and have found rest."

"Are you a priest?" asked Philippa suddenly.

The monk nodded.

"Then come in hither and rest, and let me confess to you. I fancy you might tell me what would help me."

The monk silently obeyed, and followed her to the house. An hour later he sat in Philippa's bower, and she knelt before him.

"Father," she said, at the close of her tale, "I have never known rest nor love. All my life I have been a lonely, neglected woman. Is there any balm-tree by your Well for such wounds as mine?--any healing virtue in its waters that could comfort me?"

"Have you never injured or neglected any, daughter?" asked the monk quietly.

"Never!" she said, almost indignantly.

"I cannot hold with you there," he replied.

"Whom have I ever injured?" exclaimed Philippa, half angrily, half amazed.