The White Rose of Langley | Page 2

to her voice.
"Wherefore, Mother?"
"God wot, child."
"Sister Christian told me He had no need for Himself, but that He loved us; yet why that should cause Him to die I wis not."
The mother made no answer. Her thoughts had drifted away, back through her weary past, to a little village church where a fresco painting stood on the wall, sketched in days long before, of a company of guests at a feast, clad in Saxon robes; and of One, behind whom knelt a woman weeping and kissing His feet, while her flowing hair almost hid them from sight. And back to her memory, along with the scene, came a line from a popular ballad ["The Ploughman's Complaint"] which referred to it. She repeated it aloud--
"`Christ suffered a sinful to kisse His fete.'
"Suffered her, for that she was a saint?" she asked of herself, in the dreamy languor which the intense cold had brought over her. "Nay, for she was `a sinful.' Suffered her, then, for that she sinned? Were not that to impeach His holiness? Or was He so holy and high that no sin of hers could soil the feet she touched? What good did it her to touch them? Made it her holy?--fit to meet God in the Doom [Judgment], when she had thus met Him here in His lowliness? How wis I? And could it make me fit to meet Him? But I can never kiss His feet. Nor lack they the ournment [adornment] of any kiss of mine. Yet methinks it were she, not He, which lacked it then. And He let her kiss His feet. O Christ Jesu! if in very deed it were in love for us that Thou barest death on the bitter rood, hast Thou no love left to welcome the dying sinner? Thou who didst pity her at yonder feast, hast Thou no mercy for Eleanor Gerard too?"
The words were spoken only half aloud, but they were heard by the child cradled in her arms.
"Mother, why christened you me not Eleanor?" she asked dreamily.
"Hush, child, and go to sleep!" answered the mother, startled out of her reverie.
Maude was silent, and Eleanor wrapped her closer in the old cloak which enfolded both of them. But before the woman yielded herself up to the stupor which was benumbing her faculties, she passed her hand into her bosom, and drew out a little flat parcel, folded in linen, which she secreted in the breast of the child's dress.
"Keep this, Maude," she said gravely.
"What is it, Mother?" was Maude's sleepy answer.
"It is what thou shalt find it hereafter," was the mysterious rejoinder. "But let none take it away, neither beguile thee thereof. 'Tis all I have to give thee."
Maude seemed too nearly asleep for her curiosity to be roused; and Eleanor, leaning back against the tree, resigned herself to slumber also.
Not long afterwards, a goatherd passing that way in search of a strayed kid, came on the unconscious pair, wrapped in each other's arms. He ran for help to his hut, and had them conveyed to a convent at a little distance, which the wanderers had failed to find. The rescue was just in time to bring the life back to the numbed limbs of the child. But for the mother there was no waking in this world. Eleanor Gerard had met God.
Four years after that winter evening, in the guest-chamber of the Convent of Sopwell sat a nun of middle age and cheerful look, in conversation with a woman in ordinary costume, but to whom the same description would very nearly apply.
"Then what were the manner of maid you seek, good Ursula?" inquired the nun.
"By Saint Luke's face, holy Sister, but I would not have her too cunning [clever]. I count (though I say it that need not) I am none ill one to learn her her work; and me loveth not to be checked ne taunted of mine underlings."
The nun, who had known Ursula Drew for some time, was quite aware that superfluity of meekness did not rank among that worthy woman's failings.
"I would fain have a small maid of some twelve or thirteen years. An' ye have them elder, they will needs count they know as much as you, and can return a sharp answer betimes. I love not masterful childre."
"But would you not she were something learned?"
"Nay! So she wit not a pig's head from a crustade Almayne, [A kind of pie of custard or batter, with currants] 'tis all one to me, an' she will do my bidding."
"Then methinks I could right well fit you. We have here at this instant moment a small maid of twelve years, that my Lady the Prioress were well fain to put with such as you be, and she bade me give heed to the