Chapter V His Little Nan
“Some feelings are to mortals given
With less of earth in them than Heaven;
And if there be a human tear
From passion’s dross refined and clear,
A tear so limpid and so meek
It would not stain an angel’s cheek,
’Tis that which pious fathers shed
Upon a duteous daughter’s head.”
—SIR WALTER SCOTT.
“Be sure, Jane, to tell Valentine that I will have my gown of motley velvet ready for my wearing on the morrow; and bid him set silver buttons thereto—and good plenty.”
“Please it your Grace, Master Valentine did desire of me that I should say unto you that he could not make ready the gown of motley as to-morrow, nor afore Thursday come.”
“Could not?” The Duchess of Exeter’s chiselled eyebrows were slightly raised. “Could not? But he must.”
“Please it your Grace, thus said he.”
“Tell him it skills not[#] what he can. I say he shall.”
[#] Matters not.
“Then belike there shall be more tailors had?”
“I care not how it be done, so it cost no money.”
“But, an’t like your Grace, the tailors will not work without money: and unless more be had, Master Valentine can never, his own self—without he sit up all night, nor scarce then—make an end of your Grace’s gown by to-morrow.”
“Let him sit up, then. Good lack! what ado is here over a sely[#] tailor!”
[#] Simple, mean.
“Your Grace mindeth, maybe, that you were set to have the murrey[#] gown by next Sunday?—and both two cannot be done.”
[#] Plum-coloured.
“Cannot! always at cannot! Hold thine idle tongue. Of course it can be done if I will have it so.”
“Doubtless, Madam, if it please your Grace to pay more tailors.”
“I will pay nobody. Ye will clean ruin me amongst you. “’Twas but yesterday I paid four thousand marks to a Lombard for jewelling. Ye would leave me never a cross[#] in my purse.”
[#] Penny, divided by a cross that it might be easily broken into fourthings=farthings.
“Then, an’ it please your Grace, what is to be done?” demanded the practical Jane, who was one of the four chamberers of the Duchess.
“Gramercy, maid, burden not me withal!” testily exclaimed her royal mistress. “Go and ask at Dame Elizabeth Darcy, an’ thou wist not what to do. I tell thee, the motley must be made ready for to-morrow, and the murrey by Sunday next: and how it shall be is no business of mine, so it cost not money. It shall be. See to it.”
Poor Jane, who felt herself ordered to do the impossible, made one more faint struggle with destiny.
“It should not like your Grace to bear that gown to-morrow?”
“This?” returned the Duchess contemptuously, glancing down at her dress, which was of dark blue satin, heavily trimmed with minever. “’Tis not fit to be seen. Hast lost thy wit? I tell thee, I must have a decent gown to put on. That idle Valentine hath left me never a one in my wardrobe. He is the laziest tyke that ever set needle.”
“Please it your Grace, there is the broched[#] cloth of silver”——
“’Tis all frayed at the bottom. I warrant he hath not hemmed it anew.”
“And the tawny velvet”——
“The which yon rascal Fulk spilt a glass of malmsey o’er. Tell Dame Elizabeth it must be docked of his wages.”
“And the changeable[#] green velvet”——
[#] We retain changeable silk, under the name of shot silk; but changeable velvet is lost.
“With a rent across the front breadth as wide as mine arm, and none of you idle hussies hath thought to mend it.”
“And the russet figury velvet”——
“All the pile worn off—as shabby as can be.”
“And the crimson and blue damask, and the purple tartaryn,[#] and the mustredevilers,[#] and”——
[#] A kind of satinette, or satin Turk.
[#] A cloth, of which the name was derived either from moitié de velours, or from being manufactured at Villars.
“Go thy ways for an impudent ne’er-do-well! I tell thee I will have those two gowns—I will have them! Let me hear no more of thy foolery.”
And away marched the Duchess, and left poor Jane standing in the middle of the room.
“It shall cost Master Valentine his place an’ he do it not,” muttered she to herself. “And he cannot do it—’tis not possible in the time.”
“Then, were I Master Valentine, catch me essaying to compass it!” said a voice beside her.
“Dear heart, Marion! wouldst lose thy place?”
“I would lose this place, and be rare thankful to do it,” responded the girl addressed as Marion, who was another of the chamberers. “I oft-times wish we were as the meynie,[#] and could be hence if we would.”
[#] Household servants.
The expression of Jane’s face indicated that she thought such a sentiment treasonable.
“What with her Grace, and what with Tamzine, it is not a dog’s life we lead!” continued Marion. “If the thing lay in mine hands, you should see, but I would wed the first man that asked me, just to be out of it.”
“So might you be worser off than now,” suggested Jane.
“Could not!” said Marion expressively.
Jane shook her head as if she thought that very questionable.
“Men be queer matter,” said she. “Now you can make out a woman.”
“Good lack! think you making out is all?” replied Marion. “She is easy enough to make out, is Her Grace. So is Tamzine. But I love their company never a whit the more for that. Gramercy, there goeth my Lady’s handbell! I must away.”
In an upper room in the same house two other girls were sitting. One, who sat at work in the window-seat, was so like Frideswide that we can easily guess her to be Agnes Marston. She was a little quieter than her sister in manner, and a shade less good-looking.
The other girl sat in a large, handsome, curule chair, with an illuminated manuscript open on the table before her. Her face was a remarkable one. Her figure was extremely slender, thin almost to emaciation: but more striking than this was the wan white face, where two hectic spots burned in the hollow cheeks, and the large dark blue eyes seemed of unnatural size and brilliance. A long-drawn sigh made Agnes look up.
“Your Ladyship is weary, methinks,” she said.
“I may well be thus,” was the answer, as the head was leaned on the thin hand. “I was doing that which would weary an angel, for I was trying to understand God.”
“How, dear my Lady?”
The white-faced girl lifted her head, and let her eyes meet those of Agnes.
“It were to no good to speak in riddles,” she said. “Agnes, you have dwelt in this house a full year, and you know the sorrows thereof as well as I. Specially, you know my sorrows—you know that I live a life wherein there is nothing to make the present happy, and the future is all full of a great dread. There is only one in all the world that loves me, and I cannot go to him: and one that I love not, and that loves not me, is about to be forced upon me whether I will or no. Why should I try to hide these things from you? You know them all. In all the whole world that is, and in the life that is to be, there is not one ray of sunlight for me. Do you marvel, Agnes, if life looks black to mine eyes? Are you one of those surface seers, that reckon a woman should be comforted for a breaking heart by a necklace of pearl, and that she is a fool to weep for a lost friend if she have a new gown of crimson velvet?”
“No, indeed, Lady mine.”
“Aye me!” sighed the Lady Anne. “If I had but been a carpenter’s child, or of a gardener——that I could have welcomed him back at eve from his daily work, and kept his hearth bright, and might have loved and been loved! I could have done without the pearls and the velvet, Agnes. But I have them: and they be poor exchange for the other.”
“Things will change one of these days, sweet my Lady. ‘’Tis a long lane has no turning.’”
“It has been a long one, and there be eight years now since it turned last. Eight years, Agnes—more than half my life! And folks think it strange that I care. They looked for me, it should seem, to set mine heart on gewgaws, and to think more of the bidding to a dance than of the loss of a father. If I could see an end to it, I might take less thought. But I can behold no turn coming save one, and that is for the worser.”
Agnes knew that this allusion was to her approaching marriage. Certainly that was no source of congratulation. In the eyes of the waiting-woman no less than the mistress, the handsome young Baron of Groby, Thomas Grey, the eldest son of Queen Elizabeth, who had been chosen as the future husband of the Lady Anne de Holand, was not a man to be regarded with any other sentiment than repugnance. Agnes had seen him kick his dog out of the way, and never look whether he had hurt it, when the poor little spaniel, unaware of its master’s mood, had presumed to request his attention when he was not disposed to give it.
“There is only one comfort thereanent. I shall, may-be, never live to be wedded.”
“Dear my Lady, pray you”——
“Does it look likely, Agnes?” said Lady Anne with a quiet smile,—scarcely a sad one this time.
The tears came to Agnes’s eyes. She could not say that it did.
“No,” resumed Lady Anne, after a short pause, and in a low voice, “I never loved any thing yet that did not either die or go away from me.”
“Except Jesus Christ,” said Agnes softly. She knew that she was safe in saying it—that however the black clouds might hide the Sun of Righteousness, He had risen, with healing in His wings, upon the young lonely heart beside her.
“Except Jesus Christ,” echoed the girl reverently. “And yet—O Agnes, does He not know how hard it is to see nothing? to have nothing at all that one can feel and touch, and clasp close to the heart? He had friends in this life—even He, the Man of Sorrows, was not quite without them.”
“Yet they all forsook Him, and fled.”
“Aye. That was worse. But they came back again.”
There were tears behind the voice.
“Dear my Lady, what causeth you be thus sorrowful this even?”
She broke down when that was asked. Pushing away the book, she bent her head down on her clasped hands on the table, and sobbed as though her heart would break.
“Oh, it is all so dark!” she sobbed. “If we might have gone to Heaven together, and have had each other there! Why are we kept parted? Agnes, I hate these signs of mine high estate, which seem as if they came betwixt me and him—betwixt me and peace. If I had not been King Edward’s niece—Oh, if this awful war had never begun!”
Agnes had dropped her work, and sat looking out of the window. She did not know what to say. Well enough she knew that religious platitudes would do no good here. The Lady Anne was nearer God than she was, but just now she was in the dark. She had dropped the conscious holding of the Father’s hand, and she felt like a lost child left out in the cold. Agnes did not realise that much of her depression was physical; but she did feel the necessity for offering some cheerful diversion to her thoughts.
“Dear my Lady, pray you, think on pleasanter gear.”
“Wilt find it for me, Agnes?”
That was not an easy task. Agnes hesitated. But in a few moments more the sorrowing girl had found it for herself.
“I suppose,” she said more quietly, “I must lift up mine eyes unto the hills, above all the turns in the long road. We shall be together one day, and with God. I shall not be long first. And set down at Christ’s feet in the light of the Golden City, I count it shall not seem long to wait for him.”
The child was coming back into the light. Physically, the burst of tears had relieved her.
“And yet, after all,” she said, “I shall miss him, till he comes. One cannot love one instead of another, even if God be that One. And to love once is to love for ever.”
“You can tell the Lord so, dear my Lady.”
Lady Anne looked up with an expression of child-like trust and simplicity in her eyes.
“Agnes, I am always telling Him.”
“And is He not, then, always hearing you?”
Light came into the sad blue eyes.
“Aye, He must be always hearing. I thank thee.”
The door opened, and Marion came in.
“Agnes, here is—O my Lady, I cry you mercy. I wist not you were hither.”
“Make an end, Marion,” said Lady Anne, with a smile.
“Under your Ladyship’s pleasure.—Agnes, here is one that would have speech of you. He hath brought a letter, if I err not, and for some cause is desirous to deliver the same into your own hand.”
“Go and see to it, Agnes,” said Lady Anne kindly: and Agnes left the room, and descended a long flight of stairs to the base court, where the stranger awaited her.
The stranger! Ah, what a stranger he felt, standing there in the meanest part of his own house, among strange menials to whom his face was unknown, for whom his voice had no authority. Did he think of Another who was Lord and Master of all, and who came unto His own, and His own received Him not?
“You would speak with Agnes Marston, my master?” said a gentle voice close to him. “I am she.”
The Duke turned quickly. He wore a long cloak, and a hat which could be pulled down so as to hide his face. For any eyes to recognise him would probably be fatal to his errand. Yet the sensation of utter isolation was oppressive, notwithstanding that.
“Gentle Mistress,” said he, in a tone and manner which instantly revealed to Agnes that her visitor was of her own rank or above it, “I bring you a letter from Mistress Frideswide Marston, in France, and I pray you of your courtesy to give heed to that which is writ on the outside thereof.”
Agnes held the letter up to the lamp, and read—
“Good Sister, I do beseech you to do that which this bearer shall request of you; and herein fail you not, for the love of me.”
“My sister desires me that I will do what you shall ask,” she said. “What ask you?”
“May I ask it with fewer ears by?” returned the Duke in a low tone.
Agnes nodded. That was a request only too intelligible in the fifteenth century. She took him aside to a small chamber where no other person was at that moment.
“Now, Master, your will with me?”
“I am the Duke of Exeter,” he said simply. “And I pray you, Mistress Agnes, as you ever loved any human soul, that you will win for me privy speech of the only one that loveth me—the Lady Anne, my daughter.”
Agnes looked up, and saw the yearning, passionate hunger in the poor father’s eyes. She saw nothing more for a minute.
“Sir,” she said then, “if I do it not, be assured that it shall be only because I can no way compass it.”
“God go with you!” was the reply.
Agnes hastened back to the room where she had left Lady Anne alone with Marion, and heard to her dismay the sharp tones of the Duchess as she came near the door.
“Heard any ever the like!” cried Her Royal Highness. “‘An’ it please me!’ I do you plainly to wit, my dainty mistress, that it doth not please me. I will have thee come down and speak with Master Grey. And I will have thee don a better gown for it, belike.—Agnes Marston, go this minute and lay out the Lady Anne’s gown of purple velvet.—And go thou and don it. Dost hear?”
Lady Anne said no more, but her whole face betrayed intense dislike to the task imposed upon her, when she caught the eye of Agnes. The language of the eye was well understood at that time, when the language of the lips was often dangerous. Lady Anne saw in an instant that Agnes knew of some reason why she had better leave the room, and she followed her without another word.
Meanwhile the Duke of Exeter stood below, waiting to know the result of his appeal. Could Agnes convey it at all? and if she did, would Anne come? Last and saddest question of all, if she came, would it be the child he knew, altered of course in person, but unchanged in heart? At last he could keep still no longer. Plantagenet blood was in his veins, and it was a habit of all the race, when suffering from mental excitement, to pace up and down like caged tigers. He had sufficient excuse in the cold of a February evening, and he yielded to the impulse, pausing at every sound to listen—till the door was flung open suddenly, and a tall, slight maiden, robed in violet velvet and decked with jewels, dashed into the room, and flung herself into his arms with a burst of passionate tears. Enough! Enough for the father’s heart! His little Nan had come back to him.
When the first wave had broken, he lifted the young head with one hand, and looked long and tenderly on the beloved face. And at the first glance his heart sank down, lower than it had ever been.
Come, but not to stay. Bound on a longer journey than from England to France—than from earth to stars. He held his darling close clasped in his arms, but it was probably for the last time. Verily for her the Bridegroom waited, but the bridal was not of earth.
“Nan!” broke from the father’s lips, in tones more eloquent than a volume would have been. “Little Nan!”
“I would I were your little Nan again,” she said. “We were happy then, my Lord—at least I was.”
“I never was,” was the sad answer. “I only came near enough to see that I could have been. If it had been God’s will!”
“It will be, my Lord,” replied Anne, brightly. “‘Satiabor cum apparuerit gloria tua.[#]’”
[#] Psalm xvii. 15.
“Dost know, little Nan, that thou didst learn that Psalm at mine instance? But when will it be, my darling?—when? It is such a long dark night without thee.”
Yet as he said the words, the thought smote him to the heart,—Not long, not long for one of them!
“When God’s will is,” she responded simply. “We must wait, my Lord. Oh, this awful war! had it never begun!”
She did not realise that they were parted by any but political reasons—mournful necessities, which might come to an end some time. It was better she should not.
“Little Nan,” said the Duke, “I love not ’my Lord’ from thy lips. Call me Father.”
The request was an unusual one. But she looked up and responded as he wished, with tears glistening in the violet eyes.
“You will come and see me again, Father?”
“I will come and see thee again,” he echoed—well knowing, as he spoke, that the interview was not likely to be held on the earthly side of the cold river. But surely he would meet her again; and it would be he that should come to her. There would be room in the halls above, and no need to employ a third person, nor to use secrecy and stratagem in order to meet. Up from the core of his soul went the passionate cry, “Let us go together! Make no tarrying, O my God!” He knew now at least, if he had never known it before, that there was to be no paradise for him outside the Paradise of God.
“My Lady!” said the rather nervous voice of Agnes at the door. “I cry you verily mercy, but—Her Grace is calling for you.”
None of them dared to disregard that summons.
One more last embrace! One more last look! From the Duke’s eyes
“No tears fell, but a gaze fixed, long,
That memory might print the face
On the heart’s ever-vacant space
With a sun-finger, sharp and strong.”
His very soul seemed to dissolve itself upon her head as he gave her the last blessing. She tore herself away, and stumbling with tear-blinded eyes over her velvet train, went up to receive a sharp scolding for loitering from the Duchess, and some very cold ceremonial speeches from her affianced.
All was over. There was nothing left for that desolate man. Nothing to which he could look forward! There had been just that one hope, and it was gone. Nothing was left now to hope or fear.
He had come on foot and unattended, in order to avoid recognition. Mechanically he turned to the river stairs, called a boat, and was rowed up to Westminster. As he wearily mounted the Palace stairs, the Earl of Pembroke met him.
“Ah, my very good Lord of Exeter! Whither away?”
“I know not, and care less.”
“Gramercy! what aileth you this starlight even?”
“Is it starlight?” and the Duke lifted his eyes to the glowing heavens, clear in the frosty atmosphere. “I had not observed it.”
“Good lack! you must be in the blues to-night. More shame for you! Here is nought but making ready for the Queen, whom my Lord of Warwick rideth for to meet as to-morrow. ’Tis thought the wind may give her leave to come across to-night.”
“I do desire it, right heartily.”
“Heigh-ho! do you desire anything right heartily, with that face?” said Earl Jaspar, laughing. “Come, my good Lord, what aileth you?”
“My Lord, I cry you mercy, for I wis well I am not merry company. I have this night spoken, as I think, a long farewell to mine only child. Let me pass, I pray you, till I can be more like my fellows, and come into your company without spoiling your mirth—if I ever can.”
Jaspar stood looking at his friend with eyes of utter want of comprehension. Exeter “spoke to him who never had a child,” and who, moreover, had but little sympathy with human sorrow. It was inconceivable to Jaspar why a man should bring his private sorrows into his political rejoicings, while to Exeter the difficulty would have been to allow the political joy to temper the private sorrow. Nor was Warwick a whit more sympathising. To weep for a woman, or anything that concerned one, was his emblem for masculine weakness of the extremest type. Exeter passed on, and sought refuge in his own chamber, where he lay down, but did not sleep, that night.
But when, the next morning, he presented himself as usual in the presence-chamber, he found that the Palace of Westminster held one Christ-like heart—a heart more at home in the house of mourning than in the house of feasting,—
“A heart at leisure from itself,
To soothe and sympathise.”
Through the score of eager, triumphant faces in the presence-chamber, the face upon which grief was written was instantly visible to those eyes which were worth so little for earthly foresight, and were so rich toward God.
“My Lord of Exeter! The King calls for you.”
The King himself was that day at his happiest—with the last earthly happiness which he was ever to know. He was at home again—and his was a nature which clung to accustomed things; and he was expecting the daily arrival of his wife and son, when—as he and every body believed—all would again flow smoothly, and they would live happily ever after. But Henry was one of those rare souls who cannot be happy till they have made others so.
“I pray you, come this way, my good Lord,” said the King. “There is trouble in your eyes. Is it aught I may remedy?”
“I thank your Highness heartily; but I fear not. There be evils that none save the King of kings may deal withal.”
Exeter had not meant to say another word. But in five minutes—he scarcely knew how—he found himself telling the whole story of his sorrow to the tender soul which shone in those royal eyes.
“I need not tell you, my good Lord,” said the gentle comforter, “that he were an ill soldier that should lie down to sleep ere the battle were won. It will not be long ere the battle is over. It seems to me at times”—and the dark eyes grew dreamy, as they were very wont to do—“as if it were only such a little while! And then God shall give us back to each other. We have only to wait for Him.”
“My Lord, I cry your Highness mercy, but it looks to me this night a very, very long while.”
The King smiled on his godson. The spiritual relationship between them made it only natural that the one should offer instruction and comfort to the other. He said, “Unus dies apud Dominum sicut mille anni, et mille anni sicut dies unus.”[#]
[#] 2 Peter iii. 8.
“Ah, Sire!” said Exeter sadly, “the one day for Him, but for us the thousand years.”
The response came quickly. “‘Ego vobiscum sum omnibus dielus.’”[#]
[#] Matt. xxviii. 20.
“We cannot see our Lord, Sire.”
“He can see us.”
“True: yet, my gracious Lord”——
“My son,” said the King tenderly, “He hath written down a word of set purpose for thee. ‘Quomodo miseretur pater jiliorum, misertus est Dominus timentibus se.’ Muse thou thereon, and God lead thee into His peace.”[#]
[#] Psalm ciii. 13.
He had said enough, for the Word of God in his lips had reached the heart of the mourner. It was nothing new—it had been sung in Exeter’s hearing a hundred times—but it came this time with power. Did God feel for him just as he felt for that one darling child over whom he was yearning and lamenting? It said just that. What right had he to water it down, and make it mean something vague and metaphysical? At last he had found the man who understood him. The King was a father himself, and a very loving one. And had he not at last found the God who understood him?—who was indeed his Father, who loved him as he loved his little Nan?
Yes, it would be only a little while. Ah, how little for him who spoke! Three short months, into which was to be poured an ocean of living agony, and then he should see God, and be at peace for ever. And to him who heard, only a little longer. He had but to wait for God.