The White Ladies of Worcester A Romance of the Twelfth Century

CHAPTER XVI

THE ECHO OF WILD VOIC­ES

When the Pri­oress en­tered her cell, she stood for a mo­ment be­wil­dered by the rapid walk in the dark­ness. She could hard­ly re­alise that the long strain was over; that she had safe­ly re­gained her cham­ber.

All was as she had left it. Ap­par­ent­ly she had not been missed, and had re­turned un­ob­served. Hugh was by now safe­ly in the hos­tel at Worces­ter. None need ev­er know that he had been here.

None need ev­er know--Yet, alas, it was that knowl­edge which held the Pri­oress root­ed to the spot on which she stood, gaz­ing round her cell.

Hugh had been here; and when he was here, her one de­sire had been to get him speed­ily away.

But now?

Dumb with the pain of a great yearn­ing, she looked about her.

Yes; just there he had stood; here he had knelt, and there he had stood again.

This calm monas­tic air had vi­brat­ed to the fer­vour of his voice.

It had grown calm again.

Would her poor heart in time al­so grow calm? Would her lips stop trem­bling, and cease to feel the fire of his?

Yet for one mo­ment, on­ly, her mind dwelt up­on her­self. Then all thought of self was merged in the re­al­isa­tion of his lone­li­ness, his suf­fer­ing, his bit­ter dis­il­lu­sion. To have found her dead, would have been hard; to have lost her liv­ing, was al­most past bear­ing. Would it cost him his faith in God, in truth, in pu­ri­ty, in hon­our?

The Pri­oress felt the in­sis­tent need of prayer. But pass­ing the gra­cious im­age of the Vir­gin and Child, she cast her­self down at the foot of the cru­ci­fix.

She had seen a strong man in agony, nailed, by the cru­el iron of cir­cum­stance, to the cross-​beams of sac­ri­fice and sur­ren­der. To the suf­fer­ing Saviour she turned, in­stinc­tive­ly, for help and con­so­la­tion.

Thus speed­ily had her prayer of the pre­vi­ous night been grant­ed. The pier­cèd feet of our dear Lord, cru­ci­fied, had be­come more to her than the ba­by feet of the In­fant Je­sus, on His Moth­er's knee.

Yet, even as she knelt--sup­pli­cat­ing, in­ter­ced­ing, ador­ing--there echoed in her mem­ory the wicked shriek of Mary Seraphine: “A dead God can­not help me! I want life, not death!” fol­lowed al­most in­stant­ly by Hugh's stern ques­tion: “Is this re­li­gion?”

Tru­ly, of late, wild voic­es had tak­en lib­er­ty of speech in the cell of the Pri­oress, and had left their im­pi­ous ut­ter­ances echo­ing be­hind them.