Hereward, the Last of the English by Charles Kingsley (i am reading a book .TXT) 📖

“Blessed strong arms,” sobbed she at last, “around me! To feel something left in the world to protect me; something left in the world which loves me.”

“You forgive me, mother?”

“You forgive me? It was I, I who was in fault,—I, who should have cherished you, my strongest, my bravest, my noblest,—now my all.”

“No, it was all my fault; and on my head is all this misery. If I had been here, as I ought to have been, all this might have never happened.”

“You would only have been murdered too. No: thank God you were away; or God would have taken you with the rest. His arm is bared against me, and His face turned away from me. All in vain, in vain! Vain to have washed my hands in innocency, and worshipped Him night and day. Vain to have builded minsters in his honor, and heaped the shrines of his saints with gold. Vain to have fed the hungry, and clothed the naked, and washed the feet of His poor, that I might atone for my own sins, and the sins of my house. This is His answer. He has taken me up, and dashed me down: and naught is left but, like Job, to abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes—of I know not what.”

“God has not deserted you. See, He has sent you me!” said Hereward, wondering to find himself, of all men on earth, preaching consolation.

“Yes, I have you! Hold me. Love me. Let me feel that one thing loves me upon earth. I want love; I must have it: and if God, and His mother, and all the saints, refuse their love, I must turn to the creature, and ask it to love me, but for a day.”

“For ever, mother.”

“You will not leave me?”

“If I do, I come back, to finish what I have begun.”

“More blood? O God! Hereward, not that! Let us return good for evil. Let us take up our crosses. Let us humble ourselves under God’s hand, and flee into some convent, and there die praying for our country and our kin.”

“Men must work, while women pray. I will take you to a minster,—to Peterborough.”

“No, not to Peterborough!”

“But my Uncle Brand is abbot there, they tell me, now this four years; and that rogue Herluin, prior in his place.”

“He is dying,—dying of a broken heart, like me. And the Frenchman has given his abbey to one Thorold, the tyrant of Malmesbury,—a Frenchman like himself. No, take me where I shall never see a French face. Take me to Crowland—and him with me—where I shall see naught but English faces, and hear English chants, and die a free Englishwoman under St. Guthlac’s wings.”

“Ah!” said Hereward, bitterly, “St. Guthlac is a right Englishman, and will have some sort of fellow-feeling for us; while St. Peter, of course, is somewhat too fond of Rome and those Italian monks. Well,—blood is thicker than water; so I hardly blame the blessed Apostle.”

“Do not talk so, Hereward.”

“Much the saints have done for us, mother, that we are to be so very respectful to their high mightinesses. I fear, if this Frenchman goes on with his plan of thrusting his monks into our abbeys, I shall have to do more even for St. Guthlac than ever he did for me. Do not say more, mother. This night has made Hereward a new man. Now, prepare”—and she knew what he meant—“and gather all your treasures; and we will start for Crowland to-morrow afternoon.”