MEINHOLD AND HIS PUPILS
We are loth to leave our readers too long in the den of tyranny: we pant
for free air; for the woods, even if we share them with hermits and
lepers--anything rather than the towers of Wallingford under Brian
Fitz-Count, his troopers and free lances.
So we will fly to the hermitage where his innocent sons have found
refuge for two years past, under the fostering care of Meinhold the
hermit, and see how they fare.
First of all, they had not been reclaimed to Byfield. It is true they
had been traced, and Meinhold had been "interviewed"; but so earnestly
had both he and the boys pleaded that they might be allowed to remain
where they were, that assent was willingly given, even Father Ambrose
feeling that it was for the best; only an assurance was required that
they would not stray from the neighbourhood of the cell, and it was
readily given.
Of course their father was informed, and he made no opposition,--the
poor boys were dead to him and the world. Leprosy was incurable: if they
were happy--"let them be."
So they enjoyed the sweet, simple life of the forest. They found
playmates in every bird and beast; they learned to read at last; they
joined the hermit in the recitation of two at least of the "hours" each
day--_Lauds_ and _Vespers_, the morning and evening offerings of praise.
They learned to sing, and chanted _Benedictus_ and _Magnificat_, as well
as the hymns _Ecce nunc umbræ_ and _Lucis Creator optime_.
"We sing very badly, do we not?"
"Not worse than the brethren of St. Bernard."
"Tell us about them."
"They settled in a wild forest,--about a dozen in number. They could not
sing their offices, for they lacked an ear for music; but they said God
should at least be honoured by the _Magnificat_ in song; so they did
their best, although it is said they frightened the very birds away.
"Now one day a wandering boy, the son of a minstrel, came that way and
craved hospitality. He joined them at Vespers, and when they came to the
_Magnificat_, he took up the strain and sang it so sweetly that the
birds all came back and listened, entranced; and the old monks were
silent lest they should spoil so sweet a chant with their croaking and
nasal tones.
"That evening an Angel flew straight from Heaven and came to the prior.
"'My lady hath sent me to learn why _Magnificat_ was not sung to-night?'
"'It was sung indeed--so beautifully.'
"'Nay, it ascended no farther than human ken; the singer was only
thinking of his own sweet voice.'
"Then they sent that boy away; and, doubtless, he found his consolation
amongst troubadours and trouveres. So you see, my children, the heart is
everything--not the voice."
"Yet I should not like to sing so badly as to frighten the birds away,"
said Richard.
So the months passed away; and meanwhile the leprosy made its insidious
progress. The red spot on the hermit's hand deepened and widened until
the centre became white as snow; and so it formed a ghastly ring, which
began to ulcerate in the centre, the ulcer eating deep into the flesh.
Richard's arm was now wholly infected, and the elbow-joint began to get
useless. Evroult's disease extended to the neighbouring regions of the
face, and disfigured the poor lad terribly.
Such were the stages of this terrible disease; but there was little
pain attending it--only a sense of uneasiness, sometimes feverish heats
or sudden chills, resembling in their nature those which attend marsh or
jungle fevers, ague, and the like. Happily these symptoms were not
constant.
And through these stages the unfortunate boys we have introduced to our
readers were slowly passing; but the transitions were so gradual that
the patient became almost hardened to them. Richard was so patient; he
had no longer a left hand, but he never complained.
"It is the road, dear child, God has chosen for us, and His Name is
'Love,'" said the hermit. "Every step of the way has been foreordained
by Him Who tasted the bitter cup for us; and when we have gained the
shore of eternity we shall see that infinite wisdom ordered it all for
the best."
"Is it really so? Can it be for the best?" said Evroult.
"Listen, my son: this is God's Word; let me read it to you." And from
his Breviary he read this extract from that wondrous Epistle to the
Romans--
"'For we know that all things work together for good to them that love
God, who are the called according to His purpose.'"
"Now God has called you out of this wicked world: you might have spent
turbid, restless lives of fighting and bloodshed, chasing the phantom
called 'glory,' and then have died and gone where all hope is left
behind. Is it not better?"
"Yes, _it is_," said Richard; "_it is_, Evroult, is it not--better as it
is?"
"Nay, Richard, but had I been well, I had been a knight like my father.
Oh, what have we not lost!"
"An awful doom at the end perhaps," said Meinhold. "Let me tell you what
I saw with mine own eyes. A rich baron died near here who had won great
renown in the wars, in which, nevertheless, he had been as merciless as
barons too often are. Well, he left great gifts to the Church, and money
for many Masses for his soul: so he was buried with great pomp--brought
to be buried, I mean, in the priory church he had founded.
"Now when we came to the solemn portion of the service, when the words
are said which convey the last absolution and benediction of the Church,
the corpse sat upright in the bier and said, in an awful tone, 'By the
justice of God, I am condemned to Hell.' The prior could not proceed;
the body was left lying on the bier; and at last it was decided so to
leave it till the next day, and then resume the service.
"But the second day, when the same words were repeated, the corpse rose
again and said, 'By the justice of God, I am condemned to Hell.'
"We waited till the third day, determined if the interruption occurred
again to abandon the design of burying the deceased baron in the church
he had founded. A great crowd assembled around, but only the monks dared
to enter the church where the body lay. A third time we came to the same
words in the office, and we who were in the choir saw the body rise in
the winding-sheet, the dull eyes glisten into life, and heard the awful
words for the third time, 'By the justice of God, I am condemned to
Hell.'
"After a long pause, during which we all knelt, horror-struck, the prior
bade us take the body from the church, and bade his friends lay it in
unconsecrated ground, away from the church he had founded. So you see a
man of blood cannot always bribe Heaven with gifts."
"It is no use then to found churches and monasteries; I have heard my
father say the same," said Evroult.
"Yet in any case it is better than to build castles to become dens of
cruelty--to torture captives and spread terror through a neighbourhood."
"It is pleasant to be the lord of such a castle," said the incorrigible
Evroult, "and to be the master of all around."
"And, alas, my boy, if it end in like manner with you as with the baron
whose story I have just related, of what avail will it all be?"
"Yes, brother, we are better as we are; God meant it for our good, and
we may thank Him for it," said Richard quite sincerely.
Evroult only sighed as a wolf might were he told how much more
nutritious grass is than mutton; inherited instinct, unsubdued as yet by
grace, was too strong within him. But let us admire his truthfulness; he
would not say what he did not mean. Many in his place would have said
"yes" to please his brother and the kind old hermit, but Evroult scorned
such meanness.
There is little question that had he escaped this scourge he would have
made a worthy successor to Brian Fitz-Count, but--
"His lot forbade, nor circumscribed alone
His growing virtues but his crimes confined,
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
Or shut the gates of mercy on mankind."
Still, let it be remembered, that in Stephen's days we see only the
worst side of the Norman nobility. In less than a century the barons
rallied around that man of God, Stephen Langton, and wrested Magna
Charta from the tyrant John, the worst of the Plantagenets. Proud by
that time of the name "Englishmen," they laid the foundations of our
greatness, and jealously guarded our constitutional liberties; and it
was not until after the Wars of the Roses, in which so many of the
ancient houses perished, that a Norman baron was said to be "as scarce
as a wolf," that the Bloodstained House of Tudor was enabled to trample
upon English liberty, and to reign as absolute monarchs over a prostrate
commonalty.
All through the summer our boys were very happy, in spite of Evroult's
occasional longings for the world. They cultivated a garden hard by
their cave, and they gathered the roots and fruits of the forest for
their frugal repast. They parched the corn; they boiled the milk and
eggs which the rustics spontaneously brought; they made the bread and
baked the oatcakes. They were quite vegetarians now, save the milk and
eggs; and throve upon their simple fare; but it took, as our readers
perceive, a long course of vegetable diet to take the fire out of
Evroult.
Then came the fall of the leaf, when the trees, like some vain mortals,
put on their richest clothing wherein to die; and damps and mists arose
around, driving them within the shelter of their cave; then winter with
its chilling frosts, keener then than now, and their stream was turned
into ice. And had they not, like the ants, laid by in summer, they would
have starved sadly in winter.
In the inner cave was a natural chimney, an orifice communicating with
the outer air. Fuel was plentiful in the forest, and as they sat around
the fire, Meinhold told them stories of the visible and invisible world,
more or less, of course, of a supernatural character, like those we have
already heard. His was an imaginary world, full of quaint superstitions
which were very harmless, for they left the soul even more reliant and
dependent upon Divine help; for was not this a world wherein Angels and
demons engaged in terrestrial warfare, man's soul the prize? and were
not the rites and Sacraments of the Church sent to counteract the spells
and snares of the phantom host?
And as they sat around their fire, the wind made wild and awful music in
the subterranean caves: sometimes it shrieked, then moaned, as if under
the current of earthly origin there was a perpetual wail of souls in
pain.
"Father, may not these passages lead down to Purgatory, or even to the
abode of the lost?"
"Nay, my child, I think it only the wind;" but he shuddered as he spoke.
"You think _they_ lie beneath the earth, Richard?"
"Yes, the heavens above the stars, which are like the golden nails of
its floor; the earth--our scene of conflict beneath; and the depths
below for those who fail and reject their salvation," said Meinhold,
replying for the younger boy.
"Then the burning mountains of which we have heard are the portals of
hell?"
"So it is commonly supposed," said the hermit. The reader will laugh at
his simple cosmogony: he had no idea, poor man, that the earth is round.
"Please let me explore these caves," said Evroult.
"Art thou not afraid?" said Meinhold.
"No," said he; "I am never afraid."
"But I fear _for_ thee; there are dark chasms and a black gulf within,
and I fear, my child, lest they be tenanted by evil spirits, and that
the sounds we hear at night be not all idle winds."
"You once said they were winds."
"Yes, but do winds utter blasphemies?"
"Never."
"Of course not. Is it not written, 'O all ye winds of God, bless ye the
Lord?' Now as I lay on my bed last night, methought the sounds took
articulate form, and they were words of cursing and blasphemy, such as
might have come from a lost soul."
A modern would say that the hermit had a sort of nightmare, but in those
credulous days the supernatural solution was always accepted.
"And, my son, if there be, as I fear, evil spirits who lurk in the
bowels of the earth, and lure men to their destruction, I would not
allow thee to rush into danger."
"No, brother, think no more of it," said Richard.
And Evroult promised not to do so, if he could help it.
"There be caves in the African deserts, of which I have heard, where
fiends do haunt, and terrify travellers even to death. One there was
which was, to look upon, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, but
they who passed a night there--and it was the only resting-place in the
desert for many weary miles--went mad, frightened out of their senses
by some awful vision which blasted those who gazed."
"But ought Christian men to fear such things?"
"No; neither ought they without a call to endanger themselves: 'He shall
give His Angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways.' Now our
way does not lie through these dark abodes."
So the caves remained unexplored.
But we must return to Wallingford Castle again, and the active life of
the fighting world of King Stephen's days. Suffice it for the present to
say, that the lives of the hermit and his two pupils, for such they
were, continued to roll on uneventfully for many months--indeed, until
the occurrence of totally unexpected events, which we shall narrate in
due course.