Via Crucis
Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion), 1854-1909
English
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[Illustration: "SO GILBERT FIRST MET THE QUEEN"]
VIA CRUCIS
A Romance of the Second Crusade
BY
F. MARION CRAWFORD
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"So Gilbert first met the Queen"
"Perhaps that is one reason why I like you"
"Crosses! Give us Crosses!"
Beatrix and Gilbert
"He ... held, while earth and sky whirled with him"
The Knighting of Gilbert
"For a space Gilbert answered nothing"
The Way of the Cross
CHAPTER I
The sun was setting on the fifth day of May, in the year of our Lord's
grace eleven hundred and forty-five. In the little garden between the
outer wall of the manor and the moat of Stoke Regis Manor, a lady
slowly walked along the narrow path between high rose bushes trained
upon the masonry, and a low flower-bed, divided into many little
squares, planted alternately with flowers and sweet herbs on one side,
and bordered with budding violets on the other. From the line where the
flowers ended, spiked rushes grew in sharp disorder to the edge of the
deep green water in the moat. Beyond the water stretched the close-
cropped sward; then came great oak trees, shadowy still in their spring
foliage; and then, corn-land and meadow-land, in long, green waves of
rising tilth and pasture, as far as a man could see.
The sun was setting, and the level rays reddened the lady's golden
hair, and fired the softness of her clear blue eyes. She walked with a
certain easy undulation, in which there were both strength and grace;
and though she could barely have been called young, none would have
dared to say that she was past maturity. Features which had been coldly
perfect and hard in early youth, and which might grow sharp in old age,
were smoothed and rounded in the full fruit-time of life's summer. As
the gold deepened in the mellow air, and tinged the lady's hair and
eyes, it wrought in her face changes of which she knew nothing. The
beauty of a white marble statue suddenly changed to burnished gold
might be beauty still, but of different expression and meaning. There
is always something devilish in the too great profusion of precious
metal--something that suggests greed, spoil, gain, and all that he
lives for who strives for wealth; and sometimes, by the mere absence of
gold or silver, there is dignity, simplicity, even solemnity.
Above the setting sun, tens of thousands of little clouds, as light and
fleecy as swan's-down, some dazzling bright, some rosy-coloured, some,
far to eastward, already purple, streamed across the pale sky in the
mystic figure of a vast wing, as if some great archangel hovered below
the horizon, pointing one jewelled pinion to the firmament, the other
down and unseen in his low flight. Just above the feathery oak trees,
behind which the sun had dipped, long streamers of red and yellow and
more imperial purple shot out to right and left. Above the moat's broad
water, the quick dark May-flies chased one another, in dashes of
straight lines, through the rosy haze, and as the sinking sun shot a
last farewell glance between the oak trees on the knoll, the lady stood
still and turned her smooth features to the light. There was curiosity
in her look, expectation, and some anxiety, but there was no longing. A
month, had passed since Raymond Warde had ridden away with his half-
dozen squires and servants to do homage to the Empress Maud. Her court
was, indeed, little more than a show, and Stephen ruled in wrongful
possession of the land; but here and there a sturdy and honest knight
was still to be found, who might, perhaps, be brought to do homage for
his lands to King Stephen, but who would have felt that he was a
traitor, and no true man, had he not rendered the homage of fealty to
the unhappy lady who was his rightful sovereign. And one of these was
Raymond Warde, whose great-grandfather had ridden with Robert the Devil
to Jerusalem, and had been with him when he died in Nicaea; and his
grandsire had been in the thick of the press at Hastings, with William
of Normandy, wherefore he had received the lands and lordship of Stoke
Regis in Hertfordshire; and his name is on Battle Abbey Roll to this
day.
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