The White Ladies of Worcester by Florence Louisa Barclay (web ebook reader .TXT) 📕

their knees so soon as the chanting of Vespers should reach the crypt from the choir above.

The man upon the stretcher lay motionless, with bandaged head; yet there was an alert brightness in his eyes, and the turn of his head betokened one who listened. A cloak of dark blue, bordered with silver, covered him, as a pall.

Hugh d'Argent stood in the shadow of a pillar facing the narrow archway in the wall from which the winding stairs led up to the clerestory.

From this position he could also command a view of the steps leading up into the crypt from the underground way, and of the ground to be traversed by the White Ladies as they passed from the steps to the staircase in the wall.

Here the Knight kept his final vigil.

A strange buoyancy possessed him. He seemed to have left his despondence, like a heavy weight, at the bottom of the river. From the moment when, his breath almost exhausted, he had seen and grasped the Bishop's stone, bringing it in triumph to the surface, Hugh had felt sure he would win. Aye, even before Symon had flung the stone; when, in reply to the doubt cast by him on our Lady's smile, the Knight had said: "I keep my trust in prayer," a joyous confidence had then and there awakened within him. He had stretched out the right hand of his withered faith, and lo, it had proved strong and vital.

Yet as, in the heavy silence of the crypt, he heard the turning of the key in the lock, his heart stood still, and every emotion hung suspended, as the first veiled figure--shadowy and ghostlike--moved into view.

It was not she.

The Knight's pulses throbbed again. His heart pounded violently as, keeping their measured distances, nine, ten, eleven, white figures passed.

Then--twelfth: a tall nun, almost her height; yet not she.

Then--thirteenth: Oh, blessed Virgin! Oh, saints of God! Mora! She, herself. Never could he fail to recognize her carriage, the regal poise of her head. However veiled, however shrouded, he could not be mistaken. It was Mora; and that she should be walking in this central position meant that she might with comparative safety, step aside. Yet, even this----

But, at that moment, passing him, she turned her head, and for an instant her eyes met the eyes of the Knight looking out from the shadows.

Another moment and she had vanished up the winding stairway in the wall.

But that instant was enough. As her eyes met his, Hugh d'Argent knew that his betrothed was once more his own.

His heart ceased pounding; his pulses beat steadily.

The calm of a vast, glad certainty enfolded him; a joy beyond belief. Yet he knew now that he had been sure of it, ever since he came up from the depths of the Severn into the summer sunshine, grasping the white stone.

"I keep my trust in prayer. . . . Give her to me! Give her to me! Blessed Virgin, give her to me! 'A sculptured smile'? Nay, my lord. I keep my trust in prayer!"

The solemn chanting of the monks, stole down from the distant choir. Vespers had begun.

The Knight strode to the altar, and knelt for some minutes, his hands clasped upon the crossed hilt of his sword.

Then he rose, and spoke in low tones to his men-at-arms.

"When a thrush calls, you will leave the crypt, and guard the entrance from without; allowing none, on any pretext, to pass within. When a blackbird whistles you will return, lift the stretcher, and pass with it, as heretofore, from the Cathedral to the hostel."

Next the Knight, returning to the altar, bent over the bandaged man upon the stretcher.

"Martin," he said, speaking very low, so that his trusted foster-brother alone could hear him. "All is well. Our pilgrimage is about to end, as we have hoped, in a great recovery and restoration. When the call of a curlew sounds, leap from the stretcher, leave the bandages beside it; go to the entrance, guarding it from within; but turn not thy head this way, until a blackbird whistles; upon which lose thyself among the pillars, letting no man see thee, until we have passed out. After which, make thy way out, as best thou canst, and join me at the hostel, entering by the garden and window, without letting thyself be seen in the courtyard."

The keen eyes below the bandage, smiled assent.

Stooping, the Knight lifted the cloak, fastened it to his left shoulder, and drew it around him, holding the greater part of it in many folds in his right hand. Then he moved back into the shadow of the pillar.

Above, the monks sang _Nunc Dimittis_.

By and by the voices fell silent.

Vespers were over.

Careful, shuffling feet were coming down the stairs within the wall.

One by one the white figures reappeared.

The Knight stood back, rigid, holding his breath.

As each nun stepped from the archway in the wall, on to the floor of the crypt, and moved toward the steps leading down to the subterranean way, she passed from the view of the nun following her, who was still one turn up the staircase. It was upon this the Knight had counted, when he laid his plains.

Six Seven Eight

Blessed Saint Joseph! How slowly they walked!

Nine Ten Eleven

The Knight gripped the cloak and moved a step further back into the shadow.

Twelve

Were all the pillars rocking? Was the great new Cathedral coming down upon his head?

Thirteen

The Prioress was beside him in the shadow.

She had stepped aside.

The twelfth White Lady was moving on, her back toward them.

The fourteenth was shuffling down, but had not yet appeared.

Hugh slipped his left arm about the Prioress, holding her close to him; then flung the folds of the cloak completely around her, and over his left shoulder, pressing her head down upon his breast.

Thus they stood, motionless; her face hidden, his eyes bent upon the narrow archway in the wall.

The fourteenth White Lady appeared; evidently noted a wider gap than she expected between herself and the distant figure almost at the steps, and hastened forward.

The fifteenth also hastened.

The sixteenth chanced to have taken the stairs more quickly and, appearing almost immediately, noticed no gap.

Seventeen Eighteen Nineteen Twenty

Not one had turned her head in the direction of the pillar. The procession was moving, with stately tread, along its accustomed way.

A delicious sense of security enveloped Hugh d'Argent.

The woman he loved was in his arms; she was his to shield, to guard, to hold for evermore.

Twenty-one Twenty-two

She had come to him--come to him of her own free will. Holding her thus, he remembered those wondrous moments at the entrance to the crypt. How hard it had been to loose her and leave her. Yet how glad he now was that he had done so.

Twenty-three Twenty-four

When all these white figures are gone, safely started on their mile-long walk, the door shut and locked behind them--then he will fold back the cloak, turn her sweet face up to his, and lay his lips on hers.

Twenty-five

Praise the holy saints! The last! But what an old ferret!

Yes; Mother Sub-Prioress gave the Knight a moment of alarm. She peered to right and left. Almost she saw the glint of the silver on the blue. Almost, yet not quite.

Sniffing, she passed on, walking as if her feet were angry, each with the other for being before it. She tweaked at her veil, as she turned and descended the steps.

Hugh glowed and thrilled from head to foot.

At last!

Almost----

The sound of a closing door.

Slowly a key turned, grated in the lock, and was withdrawn.

Then--silence.

But at sound of the turning key, the woman in his arms shivered, the slow, cold shudder of a soul in pain; and suddenly he knew that in coming to him she had chosen that which now seemed to her the harder part.

With the first revulsion of feeling occasioned by this knowledge, came a strong impulse to put her from him, to leap down the stairway, force open the heavy door, thrust her into the passage leading to her Nunnery, and shut the door upon her; then go out himself into the world to seek, in one wild search, every possible form of sin and revelry.

But this ungoverned impulse lasted but for the moment in which his passionate joy, recoiling upon himself, struck him a blinding, a bewildering blow.

In ten seconds he had recovered. His arms tightened more securely around her.

She had come to him. Whatever complex emotions might now be stirring within her, this fact was beyond question. Also, she had come of her own free will. The foot which had dared to stamp upon the torn fragments of the Pope's mandate, had, with an equal courage, stepped aside from the way of convention and had brought her within the compass of his arms.

He could not put her from him. She was his to hold and keep. But she was his also to shield and guard; aye, to shield not from outward dangers only, but from anything in himself which might cause her pain or perplexity, thus making more difficult her noble act of self-surrender.

Words spoken by the Bishop, in the banqueting hall, came back to him with fuller significance.

A joy arose within him, deeper far than the rapture of passion; the joy of a faithful patience, of a strong man's mastery over the strongest thing in himself, of a lover's comprehension, by sure instinct, of that which no words, however clear and forcible, could have succeeded in making plain.

His love arose, a kingly thing, crowned by her trust in him.

As he folded back the cloak, he stood with eyes uplifted to the arched roof above his head. And the vision he saw, in the dim pearly light, was a vision of the Madonna in his home.

The shelter of the cloak removed, the Prioress looked around with startled eyes, full of an unspeakable shrinking; then upward to the face of her lover, and saw it transfigured by the light of holy purpose and of a great resolve.

But, even as she looked, he took his arm from about her, stepped a pace forward, leaving her in the shadow, and whistled thrice the _Do-it-now_ call of the thrush.

Instantly the men-at-arms leapt to their feet, and making quickly for the entrance to the Cathedral from the crypt, stood to hold it from without, against all comers.

As their running feet rang on the steps, softly there sounded through the crypt the plaintive call of the curlew.

The man lying upon the stretcher rose, leaving his bandages