While one of the two friends was thus hewing his way to knighthood by
deeds of “dering do,” the other was no less steadily persevering in the
path which led to the object of his desire. The less ambitious object,
as the world would say.
He was ever indefatigable in his work of love amidst the poor and sick,
and gained the approbation of his superiors most thoroughly, although
in the stern coldness which they thought an essential part of true
discipline, they were scant of their encomiums. Men ought to work, they
said, simply from a sense of duty to God, and earthly praise was the
“dead fly which makes the apothecary’s ointment to stink.” So they
allowed their younger brethren to toil on without any such mundane
reward, only they cheered them by their brotherly love, shown in a
hundred different ways.
One long-remembered day in the summer of the year 1259, Martin strolled
down the river’s banks, to indulge in meditation and prayer. But the
banks were too crowded for him that day. He marked the boats as they
came up from Abingdon, drawn by horses, laden with commodities; or shot
down the swift stream without such adventitious aid. Pleasure wherries
darted about impelled by the young scholars of Oxford, as in these
modern days. Fishermen plied their trade or sport. The river was the
great highway; no, there was no solitude there.
So into the forest which lay between Oxford and Abingdon, now only
surviving in Bagley Wood, plunged our novice. As the poet says:
Into the forest, darker, deeper, grayer,
His lips moving as if in prayer,
Walked the monk Martin, all alone:
Around him the tops of the forest trees
Waving, made the sign of the Cross
And muttered their benedicites.
The woods were God’s first temples; and even now where does one feel so
alone with one’s Maker? How sweet the solemn silence! where the freed
spirit, freed from external influences, can hold communion with its
heavenly Father. So felt Martin. The very birds seemed to him to be
singing carols; and the insects to join, with their hum, the universal
hymn of praise.
Oh how the serpent lurks in Eden—beneath earthly beauty lies the
mystery of pain and suffering.
A wail struck on Martin’s ears—the voice of a little child, and soon he
brushed aside the branches in the direction of the cry, until he struck
upon a faintly trodden path, which led to the cottage of one of the
foresters, or as we should say “keepers.”
At the gate of the little enclosure, which surrounded the patch of
cultivated ground attached to the house, a young child stood weeping.
When she saw Martin her eyes lighted up with joy.
“Oh, God has sent thee, good brother. Come and help my poor mother. She
is so ill,” and she tripped back towards the house; “and father can’t
help her, nor brother either. Father lies cold and still, and brother
frightens me.”
What did it mean?
Martin saw it at once—the plague! That terrible oriental disease,
probably a malignant form of typhus, bred of foul drainage, and
cultivated as if in some satanic hot bed, until it had reached the
perfection of its deadly growth, by its transmission from bodily frame
to frame. It was terribly infectious, but what then? It had to be
faced, and if one died of it, one died doing God’s work—thought Martin.
So as Hubert faced his Welshmen, did Martin face his foe—“typhus” or
plague, call it which we please.
Which required the greater courage, my younger readers? But there was
no more faltering in Martin’s step than in Hubert’s, as he went to that
pallet in an inner room, where a human being tossed in all the heat of
fever, and the incessant cry, “I thirst,” pierced the heart.
“So did HE thirst on the Cross,” thought Martin, “and He thirsts again
in the suffering members of His mystical body—for in all their
affliction He is afflicted.”
There was no water close by in the chamber, but Martin had noticed a
clear spring outside, and taking a cup he went to the fount and filled
it. He administered it sparingly to the parched lips, fearing its
effect in larger quantities, but oh! the eagerness with which the
sufferer received it—those blanched lips, that dry parched palate.
“Canst thou hear me, art thou conscious?”
“An angel of God?”
“No, a sinner like thyself.”
“Go, thou wilt catch the plague.”
“I am in God’s hands. HE has sent me to thee. Tell me sister—hast thou
thrown thyself upon His mercy, and united thy sufferings with those of
the Slain, the Crucified, who thirsted for thee?”
And Martin spoke of the life of love, and the death of shame, as an
angel might have done, his features lighted up with love and faith. And
the living word was blessed by the Giver of Life.
Then he felt the poor child pulling him gently to another room, whence
faint moans were now heard. There lay the brother, a fine lad of some
fourteen summers, in the death agony, the face black already; and on
another pallet the dead body of the forester, the father of the family.
Martin could not leave them. The night came on. He kindled a fire, both
for warmth and to purify the air. He found some cakes and very soon
roasted a morsel for the poor girl, the only one yet untouched,
partaking of it sparingly himself. He went from sufferer to sufferer;
moistening the lips, assuaging the agony of the body, and striving to
save the soul.
The poor boy passed into unconsciousness and died while Martin prayed
by his side. The widow lingered till the morning light, when she, too,
passed away into peace, her last hours soothed by the message of the
Gospel.
Then Martin took the child and led her towards the city, meditating
sadly on the strange mystery of death and pain. The woods were as
beautiful as before, but not in the eyes of one whose mind was full of
the remembrance of the ravages of the fell destroyer.
“Where are you taking me?”
“To the good sisters of Saint Clare, who will take care of thee for
Christ’s sake.”
So he strove to wipe away the tears from the orphan’s eyes.
He reached Oxford, gave up his charge to the charitable sisterhood,
then reported himself to his academical and ecclesiastical superiors,
who were pleased to express their approval of all that he had done. But
as a measure of precaution they bade him change and destroy his
infected raiment, to take a certain electuary supposed to render a
person less disposed to infection, and to retire early to his couch.
All this he did; but after his first sleep he woke up with an aching
head and intolerable sense of heat—feverish heat. He understood it all
too well, and lost no time in commending himself to his heavenly
Father, for he felt that he might soon lose consciousness and be unable
to do so.
A purer spirit never commended itself to its Maker and Redeemer. But it
was not in this he put his trust. It was in Him of whom Saint Francis
sang so sweetly:
To Him my heart He drew
While hanging on the tree,
From whence He said to me
I am the Shepherd true;
Love sets my heart on fire—
Love of the Crucified.
And ere his delirium set in, Martin made a full resignation of his will
to God. He had hoped to do much for love of his Lord, to carry the
message of the Gospel into the Andredsweald, where the kindred of his
mother yet lived, and the thought that he should never see their forest
glades again was painful. And the blankness of unconsciousness, the
fearful nature of the black death, was in itself repulsive; but it had
all been ordered and settled by Infinite Love before ever he was born,
probably before the worlds were framed, and Martin said with all his
heart the words breathed by the Incarnate God, when groaning beneath
the olive tree in mysterious agony:
“Not my will, but thine, be done.”
And then he lapsed into delirium.
The next sensation of which he was conscious, and which he afterwards
remembered, for we have not done with our Martin yet, was one of a
singular character. A glorious light, but intensely painful, seemed
before his eyes. It burnt, it dazzled, it confounded him; yet he
admired and adored it, for it seemed to him the glory of God thus
fashioning itself before him. And on that brilliant orb, glowing like a
sun, was a black spot which seemed to Martin to be himself, a blot on
God’s glory, and he cried, “Oh, let me perish, if but Thy glory be
unstained,” when a voice seemed to reply, “My glory shall be shown in
thy redemption, not in thy destruction.”
Probably this took place at the crisis of the disease, and the physical
and spiritual sensations were in union throughout the illness. For now
Martin was delirious with joy—sweet strains of music were ever about
him. The angels gathered in his cell and sang carols, songs of love to
the Crucified. One stormy night, when gentle but heavy rain descended,
patter, patter, on the roof above his head, he thought Gabriel and all
the angelic choir were there, singing the _Gloria in Excelsis_, poising
themselves on wings without the window, and the strain:
_Pax in terra hominibus bonoe voluntatis,_
Was so ineffably sweet that the tears rolled down his cheeks in
streams.
This was the end of the imaginary music. The next morning he woke up
conscious—himself again. His first return to consciousness was an
impression of a voice:
“Dearest brother, thou art better, art thou not?”
“I am quite free from pain, only a hungered.”
“What food dost thou desire to enter thy lips first?”
“The Bread of Life.”
“But not as the _Viaticum_ {20}, thank God. Wait awhile, I go to fetch
it from the altar.”
And the successor of Adam de Maresco, the new head of the Oxford House,
left the youth and went into their plainly-furnished chapel, where, in
a silver dove, the only silver about the church, the reserved sacrament
of the Body and Blood of Christ was always kept for the sick in case of
need. It hung from the beams of the chancel, before the high altar.
First the prior knelt and thanked God for having preserved the life of
the youth they all loved.
“Thou hast yet great things for him to do on earth ere it come to his
turn to rest,” he murmured. “To Thee be all the glory.”
Then he returned and gave the young novice his communion. Martin
received it, and said, “I have found Him whom my soul loveth. I will
hold Him and will not let Him go.”
From that time the patient was able to take solid nourishment, and grew
rapidly better, until at last he could leave his room and sit in the
sunny cloisters:
Restored to life, and power, and thought.
And one day he sat there, dreamily watching old Father Thames, as he
murmured and bubbled along, outside the stone boundary.
“Onward till he lose himself in the ocean, so do flow our lives till
they merge into eternity,” said the prior. “Now with impetuous flow,
now in gentler ripple, but ever onward as God hath ordained; so may our
souls, when the work of life is accomplished, lose themselves in God.”
Martin moved his lips in silent acquiescence.
It was intense, the enjoyment of that sweet spring day, a day when all
the birds seemed singing songs of gladness, and the air was balmy
beyond description. Life seemed worth living.
“My son, when thou art better thou must travel for change of air.”
“Whither?” said Martin.
“Where wouldst thou like to go?”
“Oh, may I go to my kindred and teach them the holy truths of the
Gospel?”
“Thou shalt. Brother Ginepro shall go with thee, and ere thou startest
thou shalt be admitted to the privileges and duties of the second
order, and be Brother Martin.”
“And when shall I be ordained?”
“That may not be, yet. Thou art not twenty years of age. Thou mayst win
many souls to Christ while a lay brother, as did Francis himself, our
great master. He did not seek the priesthood also, too great a burden
for a humble soul like his, and certes, if men understood what a priest
is and what he should be, there would be fewer but perchance holier
priests than there are now.”
The reader must remember that nearly all the friars were laymen; lay
preachers, as we would say; preaching was not then considered a special
clerical function.
Martin could not speak for joy, but soon tears were seen to start down
his cheeks.
“I was thinking of my poor mother. Oh, that she had lived to see this
day,” he exclaimed, as he saw the prior observe his emotion.
The reader will remember that news of her death had reached Martin soon
after his arrival at Kenilworth, without which he could not have
remained all these years away from the Andredsweald. Her death had
partially (only partially) snapped the link which bound him to his
kindred, the love of whom now began to revive in the breast of the
convalescent.