The Ravens and the Angels Part 10

And from that time the stall by the Minster door ceased to be a nest of stinging rumours, and instead, the children came to her, and the suffering, and a quiet glow fell at eventide on her heart.

And so the new year dawned familiarly on all. But the Great Day dawned not yet on the world; only on one, under Gaffer Gregory's roof, the morning of new life had suddenly arisen.

The long struggle with want and toil had worn out the delicate frame of the goldsmith's widowed daughter, and on the new year's morning the worn and patient face lay motionless on the pillow with an unutterable peace stamped on it from the soul which had learned the full meaning of the words, "Behold the Man."

Still, on earth, remained the shadow of the irreparable wrongs; not on those who had suffered, but on those who had wrought them.

Bruno's sightless eyes had indeed opened on a vision of peace beside which all earthly light is dark. But from Ivo, who came and did faithful service to him in his castle, the vision of his crime could never depart on this side the grave.

To the Burgomaster's wife the calumny proved but as a purifying fire, making her fair with a more heavenly beauty than before. But to Gammer Trudchen the harvest of the evil words she had sown was ever returning.

And in the miser's house and heart the blank of the worn-out life he might have saved lay heavy; while the blessed spirit thus set free was resting with Him she had so faithfully loved in the Paradise of G.o.d.

On the wrong-doers fell indeed healing dews of forgiveness.

But the brows of the sufferers were glorious with the likeness of the thorn-crowned Lord, and with His own crown of forgiving love.

But to all these forgiven and forgiving, the cry, "_Apparebit repentina_," the Day shall appear, had become glad tidings of great joy, because to the heart of each had come, as the command of love and the inspiration of life, "_Ecce h.o.m.o_," Behold the Man!

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "Suddenly to all appearing the great Day of G.o.d shall come."

_The Cottage by the Cathedral._

Close under the walls of the Cathedral, nestling against one of its b.u.t.tresses, leant the Cottage in which the little crippled Marie lived.

Time and weather had stained and shaped the rude timbers of which it was built, and tender mosses had woven their fine tapestries over its roof, so that it seemed as little out of harmony with the stately building which looked down on it and sheltered it, as the mosses and lichens on its own stones.

For all the grandeur of the Cathedral being the grandeur of a house of G.o.d, only made it, like the everlasting hills themselves, "the hills of G.o.d," so much the more the shelter and refuge of the smallest of His creatures.

Moreover, the Cathedral, for the very reason that it was a house of G.o.d, being also a home and refuge for men, having also been designed, arch by arch, by loving human thought, and raised, stone by stone, by lowly human hands, had necessarily a twofold kindred: allying it, on the one side, with the great temple of the Creator's own building, vaulted with its infinite depths of starry worlds; and on the other side, with the lowliest dwelling in which human creatures toil and suffer. Indeed, its kindred with the cottage was closer than with the stars, because He who was adored in it became, for our sakes, Himself the greatest Sufferer; who, while He had made the stars, was made Man, and Himself lived in a very lowly cottage once for thirty years.

All this little Marie felt, as she lay hour by hour alone on her pallet; felt, not thought, for the roots of true thoughts in after-life lie deep in the feelings of the child's heart, which the child cannot utter even to itself, and which some lips indeed are never opened in this life to utter to any one: a silence not of much moment, since this is the world for learning rather than for uttering, and many of our most eloquent utterances here would seem but as babes' lispings there; while many lips which have but lisping or stammering speech here, will be opened in very glorious singing there.

For are not reverence and love the highest religious lessons of childhood; and indeed of all this life, which is but a childhood? a reverent uplooking sense of Love and Power unbounded, above, yet very near us, such as happy children learn from a holy mother's looks and tones; and little motherless Marie received, in some measure, from the Cathedral, interpreting to her, with its music and its beauty, the Our Father and the Apostles' Creed which she had learned from her dying mother's lips, when too little to understand anything but the sounds.

Marie was very much alone. Her father was a water-carrier, and was bearing water all day to the thirsty people in the hot streets of the city, or taking it to their homes. He had to leave quite early to draw the water fresh from the spring in the cool of the morning. And one of Marie's two great wishes was that one day she might go with him to the fountain, and drink the water fresh from the spring. Every morning he used to place all the things he thought his little girl would need within her reach; a little white wheaten loaf, a cup of milk, a jug of water, and, when he had had a prosperous day, some fresh fruit.

Marie thought her father's calling a very high and beautiful one, although she knew it was not considered glorious in the city, nor one that would make his name known and honoured. But that she thought little of; for her father had often told her no one in the city knew the name of the Architect of the Cathedral; and if his name had faded away from the memories of men who counted his work the chief glory of their city, it was plain, Marie thought, that the records of the city must be very imperfect and very little worth caring about, and that, probably, there were better records kept somewhere else on quite a different plan.

Water-carrying, besides not being a glorious calling in that city, was not a lucrative one; so that, in order to eke out the daily bread, Marie had learned to plait straw for fruit baskets. Agatha, the old woman who sold fruit by the Cathedral porch, bought them of her; and in return did, not without many grumblings, all the little household work Marie would have done with such deft fingers and such a glad heart, had she been able.

Sometimes, moreover, especially on a rainy day, Mark, Agatha's little orphan grandson, would spend his play-hours with Marie, and she would mend his poor ragged clothes as well as she could, and make him wonderful little toy-baskets of straw lined with orange-peel, and b.a.l.l.s of rags; and in return he would sing her little songs, and the multiplication-table, and sometimes hymns about Paradise, and the Living Fountains, and the Temple and the Singers there.

This was Marie's visible world; her father and the Cottage, Agatha and her fruit-stall, and little Mark, and the Cathedral.

To interpret it, she had the Our Father and the Apostles' Creed. Or rather, she had them to interpret each other; His invisible things being understood by the things that are seen, and our visible things by the things that are not seen.

As to how this interpretation went on, I could say more another time. My story now is simply of the Cottage and the Cathedral.

From the window by which Marie's bed lay, she could see Agatha's fruit-stall, and the Cathedral. By propping herself up she could command the fruit-stall, and see a great deal of the world, though not in its highest circles. By leaning back as far as she could in one corner, she could see to the top of the Cathedral tower, with its wonderful crown of fretted stone; common stone sculptured by man's heart and hands into a beauty greater than that of any diadem of gems.

Marie liked to think how each stone in that beautiful crown, which glowed above her in the sunsets and sunrises, and at night was itself crowned with stars, had been once a common gray stone like the fallen ones which lay on the ground outside, useless and shapeless.

Of these stones Marie did not like to think. She hoped none of them had ever been in that glorious crown. She did not think it anything but a glory for any stone to be made the lowest stone in the uttermost b.u.t.tress of the Cathedral. Indeed, the greatest glory, perhaps, for any stone was to be a hidden stone; altogether hidden, deep beneath the earth, from human eyes. For such were the very foundation and corner stones themselves, on which, as on the Unknown Architect, the whole visible glory rested. But to be a fallen stone, chipped, and marred, and useless, and crumbling into dust, when it might have been a resting-place for sunbeams, and for birds to sing welcomes to the sunbeams from, was a thought which made Marie very sad, and gave a tremulous depth to her tones when she prayed, "_Lead us not into temptation_," or tenderly coaxed little Mark not to render railings for his grandmother's railings, or to use the rough words which he learned in the streets.

The painted windows of the Cathedral were rather a distress and perplexity to Marie. Sometimes, it was true, the upper panes glittered a little in the noontide sunbeams; but, for the most part, they looked dark and confused. If they had not been painted, she sometimes wistfully thought, she might have caught glimpses of the glories inside. But then, of course, they were painted for the people inside, not for those without.

If she could only once creep Inside to see and to listen!

That was the great longing of her life.

If only once she could feel the great roof bending over her, and the walls embracing her; if, instead of straining to catch some clear melody which she might sing over in her heart, out of the dim labyrinth of those sweet and solemn sounds which reached her where she lay; if she could only once be among them, hearing the music, knowing the words, making melody in her heart among the wors.h.i.+ppers! Marie thought she could live happy for the rest of her life on the remembrance; on the remembrance and the great Hope it would light up.

She did not speak of this longing. She lived, poor little one, with so keen a sense that her life was necessarily a burden on every one around her, partly awakened by Agatha's very unconcealed complainings, and much more by her father's weary looks when he came home at night with his water-jars and his few hard-earned pence and sat down to his scanty meal, that she could never bear by look or word to express a wish for anything that was not absolutely needed or freely offered.

All the more, because she knew so well that the father's love (which was mother's and father's love to her, and so interpreted to her the Our Father) would hold any burden light and any sacrifice possible to gain the motherless child a pleasure or an alleviation of suffering.

So the longing lay deep hidden in her heart, but never came from her lips, until, one autumn when she seemed to grow brighter than usual, and a flush came on her pale face sometimes towards evening, one morning her father, looking fondly at her, said,--

"Child! by Christmas, who knows but we might have thee singing the Christmas hymns inside the Cathedral!"

Then her whole face was lit up as he had never seen it s.h.i.+ne before, with the streaming out of the long-hidden hope; and drawing his face down to her, she stroked it as she had been wont when a very little child, and kissed him, and said,--

"Oh, father, do you think G.o.d will give me the joy of going Inside?"

"Why not, darling?" he answered cheerily; "nothing is too good for Him to give; and what was the Cathedral built for, but for such as thee to sing His praises inside?"

Yet, even as he spoke, there was something in the light of the wistful eyes, and in the touch of the feeble feverish hands, that made his accents falter.

Christmas Eve came. All night the snows fell. In the morning the sun shone, but the air was keen and cold, and little Marie knew there was no going Inside for her that day. But she thanked G.o.d for making the outside so beautiful, just as if the angels of the winds had been all night decorating every ledge and angle and quaint familiar bit of carving, and all the fretwork of the stone crown, with alabaster and crystal, or some heavenly blending of glories impossible in earthly material.

As her father left her for the service, he looked fondly back, and said,--

"At Easter, darling; inside at Easter!"

But there was no ring of hope in his tones, cheerful as he tried to make the words; and when he had left her, and the soft dim music floated in broken cadences to her on her solitary little bed, for once the child felt not merely alone but lonely, and a few hot, rare tears fell through her thin fingers as she pressed them on her face.

But she was not alone. And as she lay quietly weeping, sacred words came into her heart, borne on the sacred music, like the scent of violets on the winds in spring.