The White Rose of Langley Part 14

"Now, Father Wilfred!"

"I was only thinking, lad, that when I set up my hero, he shall not be a man that met his death in a wine-b.u.t.t."

"What?--Oh! Alexander. Well, we have all our failings," admitted Bertram, reluctant to give up his favourite.

"Thou sayest sooth, lad."

"Father Wilfred, who is thine hero?"

"Wist thou who is G.o.d's hero?" asked the illuminator, laying down his pen, and fixing his eyes on the boy. "G.o.d Himself once told men who was their greatest. And who was it, countest?"

"Was it Charlemagne?" eagerly responded the unchronological Bertram.

"'Among men that are born of women, there hath not risen a greater than--'"

"Whom?" interpolated the boy, when Wilfred paused.

"'John the Baptist.'"

Bertram's face fell with a most disappointed look.

"Why, what did he? How was he great?"

"He was great in four matters, methinks, in one whereof only thou or I may not have leave to follow him. In that he foreran our Lord, his deed is beyond our reach: but in three other concernments, in no wise.

Firstly, he preached Christ."

"That the priests do," interjected Bertram.

"Do they so?" asked Wilfred rather drily. "Secondly, he feared not, when need were, to gainsay a master in whose hand lay his life. And lastly, he knew how to deny himself."

"But, Father Wilfred! all those be easy enough."

"Be they so, lad? How many times hast tried them?"

"In good sooth, never tried I any of them," said Bertram honestly.

"Then wait ere thou say so much."

There was another pause; and then Bertram found another question.

"Father Wilfred, what thinkest of Sir John de Wycliffe?"

"I never brake bread with him, lad," said the monk, busy with the griffin.

"But what thinkest?"

"How should I know?"

Evidently the illuminator did not mean to commit himself.

"Is he a great man or a small?"

"G.o.d wot," said the monk.

"Hugh Calverley saith he is the greatest man that ever lived," said Bertram.

"Greater than Saint John Baptist?"

"His work is of the like sort," pursued Bertram meditatively. "'Tis preaching and reproving men of their sins."

"G.o.d speed all His work!" said the monk.

"Father, what didst after thy turning back from Holy Land?"

"What all men do once a life. What thou wilt do."

"Marry, what so?"

"Why, I became a fool."

"Father Wilfred! I counted thee alway a wise man."

"A sorry blunder, lad," said Wilfred, putting in the griffin's teeth.

"Wouldst say a Court fool?"

"Nay--a worser fool than that."

"How so?"

"I trusted a woman," answered Wilfred,--bitterly, for him.

"Father! hadst thou ever a lady-love?"

Bertram's interest was intense at this juncture.

"Go to, Bertram Lyngern!" answered the monk, looking up with a smile.

"Be thy thoughts on lady-loves already? Nay, lad; she that I trusted was a kinswoman--no love. Little love in very deed was there betwixt us. And yet"--his voice altered suddenly--"I knew what that was too-- once."

"And she mocked thee, trow?" asked Bertram, who expected a small sensation novel to spring out of this avowal.

Wilfred worked in silence for a minute. Then he said in a low tone, "Forty years' violets have freshened and faded on her grave; nor one of all of them more fair ne sweet than she." But there was something in his manner which said, "Question me no further." And, curious as Bertram was, he obeyed the tacit request.

"And what stood next in thy life, Father?"

"This, lad," said the monk, touching his cowl.

Bertram did not consider this by any means satisfactory.