The White Rose of Langley. Emily Sarah Holt

in moving the mercy of our dear worthy Lady to plead with Him. If it be not wicked to say the same,” added she timidly, “I would God were not angered with us for such like small gear. But I count our Lady heard me, sith Father Dominic was pleased to absolve me at last.”

      “Will you give me leave to say a thing, Mistress Maude?”

      “I pray you so do, Master Calverley.”

      “Then if the same hap should chance unto you again, I counsel you to travail (trouble) yourself neither with Father Dominic nor our Lady, but to go straight to our Lord Himself. Maybe He were pleased to absolve you something sooner than Father Dominic. Look you, the priest died not to atone God for your sins, neither our Lady did not. And if it be, as men do say, that commonly the mother is more fond (foolishly indulgent) unto the child than any other, by reason she hath known more travail and pain (labour) with him, then surely in like manner He that hath borne death for our sins shall be more readier to assoil them than he that no did.”

      These were bold words to speak in the year of grace 1385. But the Queen’s squire, John Calverley, was one of those advanced Lollards of whom there were very few, and his son had learned of him. Even Wycliffe himself would scarcely have dared to venture so far as this, until the latter years of his life. It takes long to convince men that no lesser advocate is needed between them and the one Mediator with God. And where they are taught that “Mary is the human side of Jesus,” the result generally is that they lose sight of the humanity of Jesus altogether.

      It was not, therefore, unnatural that Maude’s answer should have been—“But, Master Calverley! so saying you should have no need of our Lady.” She expected Hugh to reply by an indignant denial; and it astounded her no little to hear him quietly accept the unheard-of alternative.

      “Do you as you list, Mistress Maude,” he answered. “For me, I am content with our Lord.”

      “Well-a-day! methought all pity (piety) lay in worship of our Lady!” said Maude, in that peculiar constrained tone which implies that the speaker feels himself the infinitely distant superior of his antagonist.

      “Mistress,” was Hugh’s answer, “I never said that I was content without our Lord. I lack an advocate, to the full as well as any; but Saint Paul saith that ‘oo (one) God and a mediatour is of God and of men, a man, Christ Jesu.’ And methinks he should be a sorry mediator that lacked an advocate himself.”

      Avice had lifted her head, and had fixed her eyes intently on Hugh. She had said nothing more; she was learning.

      “Likewise saith He,” resumed Hugh, “that ‘no man cometh to the Fadir but by me.’ Again, ‘no man may come to me but if the Fadir that hath sente me drawe him:’ yet ‘all thing that the Fadir gyueth me schal come to me.’ ”

      Avice spoke at last.

      “ ‘All thing given’ and none other? Then without we be given, we may not come. And how shall a man wit so much?”

      “Methinks, Madam,” said Hugh, thoughtfully, “that if a man be willing to come, and to give himself, he hath therein witness that he was given of the Father.”

      “But to give himself wholly unto God,” added Maude, “signifieth that he shall take no more pleasure in this life?”

      “Try it,” responded Hugh, “and see if it signifieth not rather that a man shall enter into joys he never knew aforetime. God’s gifts to us prevent our gifts to Him.”

      “Lady Avice! Dame Edusa hath asked twice where you be,” said Polegna, running into the hall. “The bell shall sound in an other minute, and our Lady maketh no tarrying after dinner.”

      So the trio were parted. There was no opportunity after dinner for anything beyond a farewell, and Maude, with her heart full of many thoughts, went back to her sewing in the antechamber.

      About an hour after Maude had resumed her work, Constance strolled into the room in search of amusement. She looked at the crimson tunic and black velvet skirt which were in making for her own wear at the coming Easter festival; gazed out of the window for ten minutes; sat and watched Maude work for about five; and at last, a bright idea striking her, put it into action.

      “Dona Juana! lacked you Maude a season?”

      Half an hour previous, Juana had been urging on her workwomen with reminders that very little time was left before the dresses must be ready; but Maude had learned now that in the eyes of the Mistress, Constance’s will was law, and she therefore received with little surprise the order to “sue the Señorita.” Resigning her work into the hands of Sybil, Maude followed her imperious little lady into the chamber of Dame Agnes de La Marche, who was busy arranging fresh flax for her spinning.

      “Your fingers be busy, Dame Agnes,” observed the little Princess. “Is your tongue at leisure?”

      “Both be alway at your service, Damosel,” replied the courtly old lady.

      “Then, I pray you, tell to me and Maude your fair story of the Lyonesse.”

      “With a very good will.”

      “Then, prithee, set about it,” said Constance, ensconcing herself in the big chair. “Sit thou on that stool, Maude.”

      The old lady took her distaff, now ready, and sat down, smiling at the impatience of the capricious child.

      “Once upon a time,” she began, “the ending of the realm of England was not that stide (place) which men now call the Land’s End in Cornwall. Far beyond, even as far as the Isles of Scilly, stretched the fair green plains: a kingdom lay betwixt the two, and men called it La Lyonesse. And in the good olden days, when Arthur was king, the Lyonesse had her prince, and on her plains and hills were fair rich cities, and through her forests pricked good knights on the quest of the Holy Grail, (see note 2) that none, save unsinning eyes, might ever see. For of all the four-and-twenty Knights of the Round Table, none ever saw the Holy Grail save one, and that was Sir Galahad, that was pure of heart and clean of life. Howbeit, one night came a mighty tempest. The sea raged and roared on the Cornish coast, and dashed its waters far up the rocks, washing the very walls of the Castle of Tintagel. And they that saw upon that night told after, that there came one wild flash of lightning that lightened sky and earth; and men looked and saw by its light, statelily standing, the rich cities and green forests of the Lyonesse; and then came black darkness, and a roar, and a crash, and a rending, as though all the rocks and the mountains should be torent (violently torn asunder); and then another wild flash lightened sky and earth, and men looked, and the rich cities and green forests of the Lyonesse were gone.”

      Maude was listening entranced, with parted lips; Constance carelessly, as if she knew all about it beforehand, and were chiefly amusing herself by watching the rapt face of her fellow-listener.

      “Long years thereafter,” resumed Dame Agnes, “ay, and even now, men said and say, that at times ye may yet hear the sound and see the sight of the drowned cities of the Lyonesse. Ever sithence that tempestuous night, the deep green sea lies heavy on the bosom of the lost land; and no man of unpure heart, nor of evil life, ne unbaptised, ne unshriven, may see nor hear. But if one of Christian blood, a christened man, pure of heart and clean in life, that is newly shriven, whether man or maid, will sail forth at midnight over the green sea, and when he cometh to the place where lieth the Lyonesse, will bend him down from the boat, and look and listen, then shall come up around his ears soft weird music from the church bells in the silver steeples of the doomed cities: yea, and there have been so pure, and our Lady hath shown them such grace, that they have seen the very self streets down at the bottom of the sea, where the dead walk and speak as they did of old—the knights and the ladies, as in the days gone by, when Arthur was King, a thousand years ago, when he held his court in the palaces of the lost land. And the Islands of Scilly, as men say, be the summits of the mountains, that towered once hoary and barren over the green forests and the rich cities.” (This story is a veritable legend of the Middle Ages.)

      The story was being told to an uncritical and unchronological audience, or Dame Agnes might have received