"For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to Thee."
Tennyson.
Not until the evening before her marriage did Philippa learn the name of
her new master. The Earl's choice, she was then informed, had fallen on
Sir Richard Sergeaux, a knight of Cornwall, who would receive divers
manors with the hand of the eldest daughter of Arundel. Philippa was,
however, not told that Sir Richard was expected to pay for the grants
and the alliance in extremely hard cash.
For to the lofty position of eldest daughter of Arundel (for that
morning only) Philippa, to her intense surprise, found herself suddenly
lifted. She was robed in cloth of silver; her hair flowed from beneath
a jewelled golden fillet; her neck was encircled by rubies, and a ruby
and pearl girdle clasped her waist. She felt all the time as though she
were dreaming, especially when the Lady Alianora herself superintended
her arraying, and even condescended to remark that "the Lady Philippa
did not look so very unseemly after all."
Not least among the points which astonished her was the resumption of
her title. She did not know that this had formed a part of the bargain
with Sir Richard, who had proved impracticable on harder terms. He did
not mind purchasing the eldest daughter of Arundel at the high price set
upon her; but he gave the Earl distinctly to understand that if he were
merely selling a Mistress Philippa, there must be a considerable
discount.
When the ceremony and the wedding festivities were over, and her palfrey
was standing ready at the door, Philippa timidly entered the
banqueting-hall, to ask--for the first and last time--her father's
blessing. He was conversing with the Earl of Kent, the bridegroom of
Alesia, concerning the merits of certain hawks recently purchased; and
near him, at her embroidery-frame, sat the Countess Alianora.
Philippa knelt first to her.
"Farewell, Philippa!" said the Countess, in a rather kinder tone than
usual. "The saints be with thee."
Then she turned to the only relative she had.
Earl Richard just permitted his jewelled fingers to touch Philippa's
velvet hood, saying carelessly,--"Our Lady keep thee!--I cry you mercy,
fair son; the lesser tercel is far stronger on the wing."
As Philippa rose, Sir Richard Sergeaux took her hand and led her away.
So she mounted her palfrey, and rode away from Arundel Castle. There
were only two things she was sorry to leave--Agnes, because she might
have told her more about her mother,--and the grave, in the Priory
churchyard below, of the baby Lady Alianora--the little sister who never
grew up to tyrannise over her.
It was a long journey ere they reached Kilquyt Manor, and Philippa had
time to make the acquaintance of her new owner. He was about her own
age, and so far as she could at first judge, a reasonably good-tempered
man. The first discovery she made was that he was rather proud of her.
Of Philippa the daughter of Arundel, of course, not of Philippa the
woman: but it was so new to be reckoned anything or anybody--so strange
to think that somebody was proud of her--that Philippa enjoyed the
knowledge. As to his loving her, or her loving him, these were ideas
that never entered the minds of either.
So at first Philippa found her married life a pleasant change. She was
now at the head, instead of being under the feet of every one else; and
her experience of Sir Richard gave her the impression at the outset that
he would not prove a hard master. Nor did he, strictly speaking; but on
further acquaintance he proved a very trying one. His temper was not of
the stormy kind that reigned at Arundel, which had hitherto been
Philippa's only idea of a bad temper: but he was a perpetual grumbler,
and the slightest temporary discomfort or vexation would overcast her
sky with conjugal clouds for the rest of the day. The least stone in
his path was treated as a gigantic mountain; the narrowest brooklet as
an unfathomable sea. And gradually--she scarcely knew how or when--the
old weary discomfort crept back over Philippa's heart, the old
unsatisfied longing for the love that no one gave. Her bower at Kilquyt
was no more strewn with roses than her turret-chamber at Arundel. She
found that "On change du ciel--l'on ne change point de soi." The damask
robes and caparisoned palfreys, which her husband did not grudge to her
as her father had done, proved utterly unsatisfying to the misunderstood
cravings of her immortal soul. She did not herself comprehend why she
was not happier. She knew not the nature of the thirst which was upon
her, which she was trying in vain to quench at the broken cisterns
within her reach. Drinking of this water, she thirsted again; and she
had not yet found the way to the Well of the Living Water.
About seven years after her marriage, Philippa stood one day at the gate
of her manor. It was a beautiful June morning--just such another as
that one which "had failed her hope" at the gate of Arundel Castle,
thirty years before. Sir Richard had ridden away on his road to London,
whence he was summoned to join his feudal lord, the Earl, and Lady
Sergeaux stood looking after him in her old dreamy fashion, though
half-an-hour had almost passed since she had caught sight of the last
waving of his nodding plume through the trees. He had left her a legacy
of discomfort, for his spurs had been regilded, not at all to his mind,
and he had been growling over them ever since the occurrence, "Dame,
have you a draught of cold water to bestow on a weary brother?"
Philippa started suddenly when the question reached her ear.
He who asked it was a monk in the habit of the Dominican Order, and very
worn and weary he looked. Lady Sergeaux called for one of her women,
and supplied him with the water which he sorely needed, as was manifest
from the eager avidity with which he drank. When he had given back the
goblet, and the woman was gone, the monk turned towards Philippa, and
uttered words which astonished her no little.
"`Quy de cette eaw boyra
Ancor soyf aura;
Mays quy de l'eaw boyra
Que moy luy donneray,
Jamays soyf n'aura
A l'eternite.'"
"You know that, brother?" she said breathlessly.
"Do you, Lady?" asked the monk--as Philippa felt, with a deeper than the
merely literal meaning.
"I know the `ancor soyf aura,'" she said, mournfully; "I have not
reached beyond that."
"Then did you ask, and He did _not_ give?" inquired the stranger.
"No--I never asked, for--" she was going on to add, "I never knew where
to ask."
"Then 'tis little marvel you never had, Lady," answered the monk.
"But how to ask?--whom to ask? There may be the Well, but where is the
way?"
"How to ask, Lady? As I asked you but now for that lower, poorer water,
whereof whosoever drinketh shall thirst again. Whom to ask? Be there
more Gods in Heaven than one? Ask the Master, not the servants. And
where is the way? It was made on the red rood, thirteen hundred years
ago, when `one of the soldiers with a spear pierced His side, and
forthwith came thereout blood and water.' Over that stream of blood is
the way to the Well of Living Water."
"I do not fully understand you," returned Philippa.
"You look weary, Lady," said the monk, changing his tone.
"I am weary," she answered; "wearier than you--in one sense."
"Ay, wearier than I," he replied; "for I have been to the Well, and have
found rest."
"Are you a priest?" asked Philippa suddenly.
The monk nodded.
"Then come in hither and rest, and let me confess to you. I fancy you
might tell me what would help me."
The monk silently obeyed, and followed her to the house. An hour later
he sat in Philippa's bower, and she knelt before him.
"Father," she said, at the close of her tale, "I have never known rest
nor love. All my life I have been a lonely, neglected woman. Is there
any balm-tree by your Well for such wounds as mine?--any healing virtue
in its waters that could comfort me?"
"Have you never injured or neglected any, daughter?" asked the monk
quietly.
"Never!" she said, almost indignantly.
"I cannot hold with you there," he replied.
"Whom have I ever injured?" exclaimed Philippa, half angrily, half
amazed.
"Listen," said he, "and I will tell you of One whom all your life you
have injured and neglected--God."
Philippa's protestations died on her lips. She had not expected to hear
such words as these.
"Nay, heed not my words," he pursued gently. "Your own lips shall bring
you in guilty. Have you loved God with all your mind, and heart, and
soul, and strength? Hath He been in all your thoughts?"
Philippa felt instinctively that the monk spoke truly. She had not
loved God, she had not even wished to love Him. Her conscience cried to
her, "Unclean!" yet she was too proud to acknowledge it. She felt
angry, not with herself, but with him. She thought he "rubbed the sore,
when he should bring the plaster." Comfort she had asked, and
condemnation he was giving her instead.
"Father!" she said, in mingled sadness and vexation, "you deal me hard
measure."
"My daughter," answered the monk very gently, "the pitcher must be
voided ere it can be filled. If you go to the Well with your vessel
full of the water of earth, there will be no room there for the Living
Water."
"Is it only for saints, then?" she asked in a disappointed tone.
"It is only for sinners," answered he: "and according to your own
belief, you are not a sinner. The Living Water is not wasted on
pitchers that have been filled already at other cisterns, `I will give
unto him that is athirst'--but to him only--`of the Fountain of the
Water of Life, freely.'"
"But tell me, in plain words, what is that Water of Life?"
"The Holy Spirit of God."
Philippa's next question was not so wide of the mark as it seemed.
"Are you a true Dominican?"
"I am one of the Order of Predicant Friars."
"From what house?"
"From Ashridge."
"Who sent you forth to preach?"
"God."
"Ah! yes, but I mean, what bishop or abbot?"
"Is the seal of the servant worth more than that of the Master?"
"I would know, Father," urged Philippa.
The monk smiled. "Archbishop Bradwardine," he said.
"Then Ashridge is a Dominican house? I know not that vicinage."
"Men give us another name," responded the monk slowly, "which I see you
would know. Be it so. They call us--Boni-Homines."
"But I thought," said Philippa, looking bewilderedly into his face, "I
thought those were very evil men. And Archbishop Bradwardine was a very
holy man--almost a saint."
A faint ironical smile flitted for a moment over the monk's grave lips.
The gravity was again unbroken the next instant.
"A very holy man," he repeated. "He walked with God; and he is not, for
God took him. Ay, took him away from the evil to come, where he should
vex his righteous soul no more by unlawful deeds--where the alloyed gold
of worldly greatness, which men would needs braid over the pure ermine
of his life, should soil and crush it no more."
He spoke rather to himself than to Philippa: and his eyes had a far-away
look in them, as he lifted his head and gazed from the window over the
moorland.
"Then what are the Boni-Homines?" inquired Lady Sergeaux.
"A few sinners," answered the monk, "whose hearts God hath touched, that
they have sought and found that Well of the Living Water."
"But, Father, explain it to me!" she cried anxiously, perhaps even a
little querulously. "Put it in plain words, that I can understand it.
What is it to drink this Living Water?"
"To come to Christ, my daughter," replies the monk.
"But I cannot understand you," she objected, in the same tone. "How can
I come? What mean you by coming? He is not here in this chamber, that
I can rise and go to Him. Can you not use words more intelligible to
me?"
"In the first place, my daughter," softly replied the monk, "you are
under a great mistake. Christ is here in this chamber, and hath heard
every word that we have said. And in the second place, I cannot use
words that shall be plainer to you. How can the dead understand the
living? How shall a man born blind be brought to know the difference of
colour between green and blue. Yet the hardship lieth not in the
inaptness of the teacher, but in the inability of the taught."
"But I am not blind, nor dead!" cried Philippa.
"Both," answered the monk. "So, by nature, be we all."
Philippa made no reply; she was too vexed to make any. The monk laid
his hand gently upon her head.
"Take the best wish that I can make for you:--God show you how blind you
are! God put life within you, that you may awake, and arise from the
dead, and see the light of Christ! May He grant you that thirst which
shall be satisfied with nothing short of the Living Water--which shall
lead you to disregard all the roughnesses of the way, and the storms of
the journey, so that you may win Christ, and be found in Him! God strip
you of your own goodness!--for I fear you are over-well satisfied
therewith. And no goodness shall ever have admittance into Heaven save
the goodness which is of God."
"But surely," exclaimed Philippa, looking up in surprise, "there is
grace of congruity?"
"Grace of congruity! grace of condignity!" [see Note] cried the monk
fervently. "Grace of sin and gracelessness! It is not all worth so
much as one of these rushes upon your floor. If you carry grace of
congruity to the gates of Heaven, I warn you it shall never bear you one
step beyond. Lay down those miserable rush-staffs, wherein is no pith;
and take God's golden staff held out to you, which is the full and
perfected obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ. That staff shall not fail
you. All the angels at the gate of Paradise know it; and the doors
shall fly wide open to whoso smiteth on them with that staff of God.
Lord, open her eyes, that she may see!"
The prayer was answered, but not then.
"What shall I call you?" asked Philippa, when the monk rose to depart.
"Men call me Guy of Ashridge," he said.
"I hope to see you again, Father," responded Philippa.
"So do I, my daughter," answered the monk, "in that other land whereinto
nothing shall enter that defileth. Nothing but Christ and Christ's--the
Head and the body, the Master and the meynie [household servant]. May
the Master make you one of the meynie! Farewell."
And in five minutes more, Guy of Ashridge was gone.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note. "Condignity implies merit, and of course claims reward on the
score of justice. Congruity pretends only to a sort of imperfect
qualification for the gifts and reception of God's grace."--_Manet's
Church History_, iv. 81.