The White Rose of Langley | Page 3

same. 'Tis a waif that Anthony, our goatherd, found in the forest, with her mother, that was frozen to death in an hard winter; but the child abode, and was saved. Truly, for cunning there is little in her; but for meekness and readiness to do your will, the maid is as good as any. But ye shall see her I think on."
Sister Oliva stepped to the door, and spoke in a low tone to some person outside. She came back and reseated herself, and a minute afterwards there was a low, timid tap at the door.
"Come in, child," said the nun.
And Maude came in.
She was small and slight for her twelve years, and preternaturally grave. A quantity of long dark hair hung round her head in a condition of seemingly hopeless tanglement, and the dark eyes, proportionately larger than the rest of the features, wore an expression of mingled apathy and suspicion, alike strange and painful to see in the eyes of a child.
"Come forward, Maude, and speak with Mistress Drew. Mercy on us, child! how hast moiled thine hair like a fowl his pennes!" [Feathers.]
Maude made no reply. She came a few steps nearer, dropped a rustic courtesy, and stood to be questioned.
"What is thy name?" inquired Mistress Ursula, as though she were beginning the catechism.
"Maude," said the child under her breath.
"And what years hast--twelve?"
"Twelve, the last Saint Margaret."
"And where wert born? Dost know?"
Maude knew, though for some reason with which she herself was best acquainted, she had been much more chary of her information to my Lady the Prioress than she now chose to be.
"At Pleshy, in Essex."
"And what work did thy father?"
Maude looked up with a troubled air, as if the idea of that relative's possible existence had never suggested itself to her.
"I never had any father!" she said, in a pained tone. "Cousin Hawise had a father, and he wrought iron on the anvil. But I had none--never! I had a mother--that was all."
"And what called men thy mother?"
"Eleanor Gerard."
"Then thy name is Maude Gerard," said Oliva, sharply.
Maude's silence appeared to indicate that she declined to commit herself either affirmatively or negatively.
"And what canst do, maid?" inquired Ursula, changing the subject to one of more practical purport.
Perhaps the topic was too large for reply, for Maude's only response was a nervous twisting of her fingers. Sister Oliva answered for her.
"Marry, she can pluck a chick, and roll pastry, and use a bedstaff, and scour a floor, and sew, and the like. She hath not been idle, I warrant you."
"Couldst cleanse out a pan an' thou wert set about it?"
"Ay," said Maude, under her breath.
"And couldst run of a message?"
"Ay."
"And couldst do as folk bid thee?"
"Ay."
But each time the child's voice grew fainter.
"Sister Oliva, I will essay the little maid, by your leave."
"And with my very good will, friend Ursula."
"Me counteth I shall make the best cook of her in all Herts. What sayest, maid?--wilt of thy good will be a cook?"
Maude looked up, looked down, and said nothing. But nature had not made her a cook, and the utmost Ursula Drew could do in that direction was to spoil a good milliner.
So little Maude went with Ursula--into a very different sphere of life from any which she could hitherto remember. The first home which she recollected was her grandfather's cottage, with the great elms on one side of it and the forge on the other, at which the old man had wrought so long as his strength permitted, and had then handed over, as the family inheritance, to his son. Since the world began for Maude, that cottage and the forge had always stood there, and its inhabitants had always been Grandfather, and Uncle David, and Aunt Elizabeth, and Cousin Hawise, and Cousin Jack, and Mother.
At some unknown time in the remote past there had been a grandmother, for Maude had heard of her; but with that exception, there had never been anybody else, and her father was to her an utterly mythic individual. She had never heard such a person named until Ursula Drew inquired his calling. And then, one awful winter night, something dreadful had happened. What it was Maude never precisely knew. She only knew that there was a great noise in the night, and strange voices in the cottage, and cries for mercy; and that when morning broke Uncle David was gone, and was seen afterwards no more. So then they tried to keep on the old forge a little longer; but Grandfather was past work, and Cousin Jack was young and inexperienced, and customers would not come as they had done to brawny-armed Uncle David, to whose ringing blows on the anvil Maude had loved to listen. And one day she heard Aunt Elizabeth say to Grandfather that the forge