The Well in the Desert Part 15

"Thou thinkest, then, mother," replied Philippa with a sigh, "that we cannot understand the matter at all."

"We can understand only what is revealed to us," replied Isabel; "and that, I grant, is but little; yet it is enough. 'As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten.' 'What son is he whom the father chasteneth not?'

How could it be otherwise? He were no wise father nor loving, who should teach his son nothing, or should forbear to rebuke him for such folly as might hereafter be his ruin."

Isabel was silent, and Philippa's memory went back to those old loveless days at Arundel, when for her there had been no chastening, no rebuke, only cold, lifeless apathy. That was not love. And she thought also of her half-sister Alesia, whom she had visited once since her marriage, and who brought up her children on the principle of no contradiction and unlimited indulgence; and remembering how discontented and hard to please this discipline had made them, she began to see that was not love either.

"Thou hast wrought arras, my daughter," said Isabel again. "Thou knowest, therefore, that to turn the arras the backward way showeth not the pattern. The colours are all mixed out of proportion, as the fastenings run in and out. So our life is in this world. The arras shall only be turned the right way above, when the angels of G.o.d shall see it, and marvel at the fair proportions and beauteous colours of that which looked so rough and misshapen here below.

"Moreover, we are thus tried, methinks, not only for our own good. We are sent into this world to serve: to serve G.o.d first, and after to serve man for G.o.d's sake. And every blow of the chisel on the stone doth but dress it for its place. G.o.d's chisel never falleth on the wrong place, and never giveth a stroke too much. Every pang fitteth us for more service; and I think thou shouldst find, in most instances, that the higher and greater the service to which the varlet is called, the deeper the previous suffering which fitteth him therefor. And G.o.d's greatnesses are not ours. In His eyes, a poor serving-maiden may have a loftier and more difficult task than a lord of the King's Council, or a Marshal of the army.

"And after all, every sorrow and perplexity, be it large or small, doth but give G.o.d's child an errand to his Father. Nothing is too little to bear to His ear, if it be not too little to distress and perplex His servant. To Him all things pertaining to this life are small--the cloth of estate no less than the blade of gra.s.s; and all things pertaining to that other and better life in His blessed Home, are great and mighty.

Yet we think the first great, and the last little. And therefore things become great that belong to the first life, just in proportion as they bear upon the second. Nothing is small that becomes to thee an occasion of sin; nothing, that can be made an incentive to holiness."

"O mother, mother!" said Philippa, with a sudden sharp shoot of pain, "to-morrow I shall be far away from you, and none will teach me any more!"

"G.o.d will teach thee Himself, my child," said Isabel tenderly. "He can teach far better than I. Only be thou not weary of His lessons; nor refuse to learn them. Maybe thou canst not see the use of many of them till they are learned; but 'thou shalt know hereafter.' Thou shalt find many a thorn in the way; but remember, it is not set there in anger, if thou be Christ's; and many a flower shall spring up under thy feet, when thou art not looking for it. Only do thou never loose thine hold on Him, who has promised never to loose His on thee. Not that thou shouldst be lost in so doing; He will have a care of that: but thou mightest find thyself in the dark, and so far as thou couldst see, alone. It is sin that hides G.o.d from man; but nothing can hide man from G.o.d."

And Philippa, drawing closer to her, whispered,--"Mother, pray for me."

A very loving smile broke over Isabel's lips, as she pressed them fondly upon Philippa's cheek.

"Mine own Philippa," she said, in the softest accent of her soft voice, "dost thou think I have waited thirty years for that?"

Note 1. I am aware that this resolution will appear inconsistent with Isabel's character; yet any other would have been inconsistent with her times. The vows of recluses were held very sacred; and the opinions of the Boni-Homines on the monastic question were little in advance of those of the Church of Rome.

Note 2. Had Sir Richard been a peer, he would have said "_our_ hands."

This style, now exclusively royal, was in 1372 employed by all the n.o.bles.

Note 3. This adjective also was peculiar to the peerage and the Royal Family. It was given to every relation except between husband and wife: and the French _beau-pirt_ for _father-in-law_ is doubtless derived from it. Nay, it was conferred on the Deity; and "Fair Father Jesu Christ"

was by no means an uncommon t.i.tle used in prayer. In like manner, Saint Louis, when he prayed, said, "_Sire Dieu_," the t.i.tle of knighthood.

Quaint and almost profane as this usage sounds to modern ears, I think their instinct was right: they addressed G.o.d in the highest and most reverential terms they knew.

CHAPTER TEN.

FOUR YEARS LATER.

"When the sh.o.r.e is won at last, Who will count the billows past?"

Keble.

It was winter again; and the winds blew harshly and wailingly around the Castle of Arundel. In the stateliest chamber of that Castle, where the hangings were of cramoisie paned with cloth of gold, the evening tapers were burning low, and a black-robed priest knelt beside the bed where an old man lay dying.

"I can think of nothing more, Father," faintly whispered the penitent.

"I have confessed every sin that I have ever sinned, so far as my memory serveth: and many men have been worse sinners than I. I never robbed a church in all my wars. I have bequeathed rents and lands to the Priory of G.o.d and Saint Pancras at Lewes, for two monks to celebrate day by day ma.s.ses of our Lady and of the Holy Ghost,--two hundred pounds; and for matins and requiem ma.s.ses in my chapel here, a thousand marks; and four hundred marks to purchase rent lands for the poor; and all my debts I have had a care to pay. Can I perform any other good work? Will that do, Father?"

"Thou canst do nought else, my son," answered the priest. "Thou hast right n.o.bly purchased the favour of G.o.d, and thine own salvation. Thy soul shall pa.s.s, white and pure, through the flames of Purgatory, to be triumphantly acquitted at the bar of G.o.d."

And lifting his hands in blessing, he p.r.o.nounced the unholy incantation,--"_Absolvo te_!"

"Thank the saints, and our dear Lady!" feebly responded the dying man.

"I am clean and sinless."

Before the morrow dawned on the Conversion of Saint Paul, that old man knew, as he had never known on earth, whether he stood clean and sinless before G.o.d or not. There were no bands in that death. The river did not look dark to him; it did not feel cold as his feet touched it. But on the other side what angels met him? and what entrance was accorded, to that sin-defiled and uncleansed soul, into that Land wherein there shall in no wise enter anything that defileth?

And so Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, pa.s.sed away.

Two months later,--by a scribe's letter, written in the name of her half-brother, the young, brave, joyous man upon whose head the old coronet had descended,--the news of the Earl's death reached Philippa Sergeaux at Kilquyt. Very differently it affected her from the manner in which she would have received it four years before. And very differently from the manner in which it was received by the daughters of Alianora, to whom (though they did not put it into audible words) the real thought of the heart was--"Is the old man really gone at last?

Well, it was time he should. Now I shall receive the coronet he left to me, and the two, or three, thousand marks." For thus he had remembered Joan and Alesia; and thus they remembered him. To Mary he left nothing; a sure sign of offence, but how incurred history remains silent. But to the eldest daughter, whose name was equally unnamed with hers--whose ears heard the news so far away--whose head had never known the fall of his hand in blessing--whose cheek had never been touched by loving lips of his--to Philippa Sergeaux the black serge for which she exchanged her damask robes was real mourning.

She did not say now, "I can never forgive my father." It is not when we are lying low in the dust before the feet of the Great King, oppressed with the intolerable burden of our ten thousand talents, that we feel disposed to rise and take our fellow-servant by the throat, with the pitiless, "Pay me that thou owest." The offensive "Stand by,--I am holier than thou!" falls only from unholy lips. When the woman that was a sinner went out, washed and forgiven, from that sinless Presence, with the shards of the broken alabaster box in her hand, she was less likely than at any previous time in her life to reproach the fellow-sinners whom she met on her journey home. So, when Philippa Sergeaux's eyes were opened, and she came to see how much G.o.d had forgiven her, the little that she had to forgive her father seemed less than nothing in comparison. She could distinguish now, as previously she could not--but as G.o.d does always--between the sin and the sinner; she was able to keep her hatred and loathing for the first, and to regard the second with the deepest pity. And when she thought of the sleep into which she could have little doubt that his soul had been lulled,--of the black awakening "on the brink of the pit,"--there was no room in her heart for any feeling but that of unutterable anguish.

They had not sent for her to Arundel. Until she heard that the end was reached, she never knew he was near the end at all.

It is not Christianity, but Pharisaism, which would shut up the kingdom of heaven against all but itself. To those who have tasted that the Lord is gracious, it is something more than mere privilege to summon him that is athirst to come. "Necessity is upon them--yea, woe is unto them if they preach not the gospel!" Though no Christian is a priest, every Christian must be a preacher. Ay, and that whether he will or not. He may impose silence upon his lips, but his life must be eloquent in spite of himself. And what a terrible thought is this, when we look on our poor, unworthy, miserable lives rendered unto the Lord, for all His benefits toward us! When the world sees us vacillating between right and wrong--questioning how near we may go to the edge of the precipice and yet be safe--can it realise that we believe that right and wrong to be a matter of life and death? Or when it hears us murmuring continually over trifling vexations, can it believe that we honestly think ourselves those to whom it is promised that all shall work for good--that all things are ours--that we are heirs of G.o.d, and joint-heirs with Christ?

O Lord, pardon the iniquities of our holy things! Verily, without Thee we can do nothing.

On the morning that this news reached Kilquyt, an old man in the garb of the Dominican Order was slowly mounting the ascent which led from the Vale of Sempringham. The valley was just waking into spring life. In the trees above his head the thrushes and chaffinches were singing; and just before him, diminished to a mere speck in the boundless blue, a lark poured forth his "flood of delirious music." The Dominican paused and rested on his staff while he listened.

"Sing, happy birds!" he said, when at length the lark's song was over, and the bird had come down to earth again. "For you there are no vain regrets over yesterday, no woeful antic.i.p.ations of to-morrow. But what kind of song can _she_ sing when she hath heard the news I bring her?"

"Father Guy!" said a voice beside him.

It was a child of ten years old who stood in his path--a copy of Elaine four years before.

"Ah, maid, art thou there?" answered Guy. "Run on, Annora, and say to the Grey Lady that I will be at her cell in less than an hour. Thy feet are swifter than mine."

Annora ran blithely forward. Guy of Ashridge pursued his weary road, for he was manifestly very weary. At length he rather suddenly halted, and sat down on a bank where primroses grew by the way-side.

"I can go no further without resting," said he. "Ten is one thing, and threescore and ten is another. If I could turn back and go no further!--Is the child here again already?"

"Father Guy," said Annora, running up and throwing herself down on the primrose bank, "I have been to the cell, but I have not given your message."

"Is the Lady not there?" asked Guy, a sudden feeling of relief coming over him.

"Oh yes, she is there," replied the child; "but she was kneeling at prayer, and I thought you would not have me disturb her."

"Right," answered the monk. "But lest she should leave the cell ere I reach it, go back, Annora, and keep watch. Tell her, if she come forth, that I must speak with her to-day."

Once more away fled the light-footed Annora, and Guy, rising, resumed his journey.

"If it must be, it may as well be now," he said to himself, with a sigh.

So, plodding and resting by turns, he at length arrived at the door of the cell. The door was closed, and the child sat on the step before it, singing softly to herself, and playing with a lapful of wild flowers-- just as her sister had been doing when Philippa Sergeaux first made her acquaintance.