The Well in the Desert | Page 8

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 fashion, though half-an-hour had almost passed 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