The White Rose of Langley | Page 5

the low as she was, she enjoyed with an intensity till then
unknown to herself, and certainly not shared by any other in her sphere.
That sense of the beautiful, which, trained in different directions, makes

men poets, painters, and architects, was very strong in little Maude. She
could not have explained in the least how it was that the curves in the
stonework, or the rich colours in the windows of the great hall, gave her
a mysterious sensation of pleasure, which she could not avoid detecting
that they never gave to any of her kitchen associates; and she obtained
many a scolding for her habit of what my Lady the Prioress had called
"idle dreaming," and Mistress Drew was pleased to term "lither
laziness;" when, instead of cleaning pans, Maude was thinking poetry.
Alas for little Maude! her vocation was not to think poetry; and it was
to scour pans.
The Palace of Langley, which had become the scene of Maude's
pan-cleaning, was built in a large irregular pile. The kitchen and its
attendant offices were at one end, and over them reigned Ursula Drew,
who, though supreme in her government of Maude, was in reality only
a vice-queen. Over Ursula ruled a man-cook, by name Warine de la
Misericorde, concerning whom his subordinate's standing joke was that
"Misericorde was rarely [extremely] merciless." But this potentate in
his turn owed submission to the master of the household, a very great
gentleman with gold embroidery on his coat, concerning whom
Maude's only definite notion was that he must be courtesied to very low
indeed.
Master and mistress were mere names to Maude. The child was
near-sighted, and though, like every other servant in the Palace, she ate
daily in the great hall, her eyes were not sufficiently clear, from her low
place at the extreme end, to make out anything on the distant dais
beyond a number of grey shapeless shadows. She knew when the royal,
and in her eyes semi-celestial persons in question were, or were not, at
home; she had a dim idea that they bore the titles of Earl and Countess
of Cambridge, and that they were nearly related to majesty itself; she
now and then heard Ursula informed that my Lord was pleased to
command a certain dish, or that my Lady had condescended to approve
a particular sauce. She had noticed, moreover, that two of the grey
shadows at the very top of the hall, and therefore among the most
distinguished persons, were smaller than the rest; she inferred that these
ineffable superiors had at least two children, and she often longed to

inspect them within comfortable seeing distance. But no such good
fortune had as yet befallen her. Their apartments were inaccessible
fairy-land, and themselves beings scarcely to be gazed on with
undazzled eyes.
Very monotonous was Maude's new life:--cleaning pans, washing jars,
sorting herbs, scouring pails, running numberless infinitesimal errands,
doing everything that nobody else liked, hard-worked from morning to
night, and called up from her hard pallet to recommence her toil before
she had realised that she was asleep. Ursula's temper, too, did not
improve with time; and Parnel, the associate and contemporary of
Maude, was by no means to be mistaken for an angel.
Parnel was three years older than Maude, and much better acquainted
with her work. She could accomplish a marvellous quantity within a
given time, when it pleased her; and it generally did please her to rush
to the end of her task, and to spend the remaining time in teasing
Maude. She had no positive unkind feeling towards the child, but she
was extremely mischievous, and Maude being extremely teasable, the
temptation of amusing her leisure by worrying the nervous and
inexperienced child was too strong to be resisted. The occupations of
her present life disgusted Maude beyond measure. The scullery-work,
of which Ursula gave her the most unpleasant parts, was unspeakably
revolting to her quick sense of artistic beauty, and to a certain delicacy
and refinement of nature which she had inherited, not acquired; and
which Ursula, if she could have comprehended it, would have despised
with the intense contempt of the coarse mind for the fine. The child was
one morning engaged in cleaning a very greasy saucepan, close to the
open window, when, to her surprise, she was accosted by a strange
voice in the base court, or back yard of the palace.
"Is that pleasant work--frotting [rubbing] yonder thing?"
Maude looked up into a pair of bright, kindly eyes, which belonged to a
boy attired as a page, some three or four years older than herself.
Something in the lad's good-natured face won her confidence.
"No," she answered honestly, "'tis right displeasant to have ado with

such feune!" [dirt.]
"So me counted," replied the boy.