held out his arms, and the two little black-frocked things sprang into them, clinging round his neck and crying.
“Come – come. Is the litter ready, else I shall be too late to get you aboard Dom Manuel’s ship? But hark! who comes? ’Tis my lord the Infante himself.”
Sir Walter set down his daughters, who retreated, hand-in-hand, under a great orange-tree; while their father rose and went to the door, as he heard horses stopping without. In a few moments he returned, accompanied by a tall, slender young man, dressed in black velvet, with a red cross on his breast. Fernando of Avis, as he was called, since, like his father, he was Grand-Master of the Order of Avis, had led, during the twelve years since the taking of Ceuta, neither an idle nor a useless life, but his boyish ambition was still unsatisfied; he had struck no blow against the Infidel power, led no armies to battle, and won no triumphs. His health had always been so delicate, and he was subject to such long attacks of illness, that it was only at intervals that he could indulge in his taste for military towards which, however, his natural impulse was so strong that he had no inconsiderable skill in riding, fencing, and tilting. The delicate Fernando was more essentially a soldier than any of his powerful brothers; he longed with a more ardent desire for knightly glory – a longing hitherto perforce suppressed; but it was for glory to be won by that chivalrous self sacrifice which formed the ideal of the Middle Ages, however seldom it was put in practice. And Fernando’s dreams were of personal distinction only in one cause – the cause of the Church; he had therefore gladly accepted the control of one of these military orders which, somewhat similar in character to the Knights Templar, were so common in Spain and Portugal. The vows of these orders pledged their members to the most perfect devotion and purity of life. They did not always preclude marriage; and where celibacy was their rule, dispensations were obtainable, as in the case of King Joao himself; and their great revenues formed an ample provision for princes of the blood, and were applied by Dom Enrique – who was head of the Order of Christ; Dom Joao, who was Master of that of Saint James; and by Dom Fernando himself – to many useful and charitable ends.
Fernando was thus pledged to the life of a soldier-saint. He could not be a soldier, and with the discontent of his ambitious and ardent nature he daily felt himself still less of a saint. But those who watched his deep religious fervour, his constant self-denials, and his untiring patience, thought differently; still more those who felt his kindly charity and his unfailing sweetness of temper and warmth of heart. He still possessed the fair colouring regular features of his English cousins, but his blue Plantagenet eyes had a softened, wistfulness as of unsatisfied desires.
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