A Forgotten Hero | Page 6

I reckon--and these caitiff hildings making the very walls for to ring with their wicked foolish laughter!--Agatha! bring me hither the rod. I will see if a good whipping bring not down your ill-beseen spirits, mistress!"
Elaine turned pale, and cast a beseeching glance at the pleasanter of the ladies.
"Nay, now, Cousin Meg," interposed she, "I pray you, let not this my first visit to Oakham be linked with trouble to these young maids. I am well assured you know grey heads cannot be well set on green shoulders."
"Lady, I am right unwilling to deny any bidding of yours. But I do desire of you to tell me if it be not enough to provoke a saint to swear?"
"What! to hear a young maid laugh, cousin? Nay, soothly, I would not think so."
Mistress Underdone had entered the room, and, after dropping a courtesy to each of the ladies, stood waiting the pleasure of her mistress. Clarice was slowly coming to the conclusion, with dire dismay, that the sharp-featured, sharp-tongued woman before her was no other than the Lady Margaret of Cornwall, her lovely lady with the pathetic eyes.
"Give me the rod, Agatha," said the Countess, sternly.
"Nay, Cousin Meg, I pray you, let Agatha give it to me."
"You'll not lay on!" said the Countess, with a contortion of her lips which appeared to do duty for a smile.
"Trust me, I will do the right thing," replied Queen Blanche, taking the rod which Mistress Underdone presented to her on the knee. "Now. Elaine, stand out here."
Elaine, very pale and preternaturally grave, placed herself in the required position.
"Say after me. `I entreat pardon of my Lady for being so unhappy as to offend her.'"
Elaine faltered out the dictated words.
"Kiss the rod," said the Queen.
She was immediately obeyed.
"Now, Cousin Meg, for my sake, I pray you, let that suffice."
"Well, Lady, for your sake," responded the Countess, with apparent reluctance, looking rather like a kite from whose talons the Queen had extracted a sparrow intended for its dinner.
"Sit you in this chamber, Cousin Meg?" asked the Queen, taking a curule chair as she spoke--the only one in the room.
"Nay, Lady. 'Tis mine hour for repeating the seven penitential psalms. I have no time to waste with these giglots."
"Then, I pray you, give me leave to abide here myself for a season."
"You will do your pleasure, Lady. I only pray of you to keep them from laughing and such like wickedness."
"Nay, for I will not promise that for myself," said Queen Blanche, with a good-tempered smile. "Go your ways, Meg; we will work no evil."
The Countess turned and stalked out of the door again. And Clarice's first castle in the air fell into pieces behind her.
"Now, Agatha, I pray thee shut the door," said the Queen, "that we offend not my Cousin Margaret's ears in her psalms. Fare ye all well, my maids? Thy face is strange to me, child."
Clarice courtesied very low. "If it please the Lady Queen, I am but just come hither."
She had to tell her name and sundry biographical particulars, and then, suddenly looking round, the Queen said, "And where is Heliet?"
"Please it the Lady Queen, in my chamber," said Mistress Underdone.
"Bid her hither, good Agatha--if she can come."
"That can she, Lady."
Mistress Underdone left the room, and in another minute the regular tap of approaching crutches was audible. Clarice imagined their wearer to be some old woman--perhaps the mother of Mistress Underdone. But as soon as the door was opened again, she was surprised and touched to perceive that the sufferer who used them was a girl little older than herself. She came up to Queen Blanche, who welcomed her with a smile, and held her hand to the girl's lips to be kissed. This was her only way of paying homage, for to her courtesying and kneeling were alike impossible.
Clarice felt intuitively, as she looked into Heliet's face, that here was a girl entirely different from the rest. She seemed as if Nature had intended her to be tall, but had stopped and stunted her when only half grown. Her shoulders were unnaturally high, and one leg was considerably shorter than the other. Her face was not in any way beautiful, yet there was a certain mysterious attraction about it. Something looked out of her eyes which Clarice studied without being able to define, but which disposed her to keep on looking. They were dark, pathetic eyes, of the kind with which Clarice had gifted her very imaginary Countess; but there was something beyond the pathos.
"It looks," thought Clarice, "as if she had gone through the pathos and the suffering, and had come out on the other side--on the shore of the Golden Land, where they see what everything meant, and are satisfied."
There was very little time for conversation before the supper-bell