"I am not eager, strong,
Nor bold--all that is past;
I am ready not to do,
At last--at last.
"My half-day's work is done,
And this is all my part:
I give a patient God
My patient heart."
Vespers were over at Ashridge on the last day of September, the evening
of the Earl's arrival. He sat in the guest-chamber, with the Prior and
his Buckinghamshire bailiff, to whom he was issuing instructions with
respect to some cottages to be built for the villeins on one of his
estates. The Prior sat by in silence, while the Earl impressed on the
mind of his agent that the cottages were to be made reasonably
comfortable for the habitation of immortal souls and not improbably
suffering bodies. When at last the bailiff had departed, the Prior
turned to his patron with a smile. "I would all lay lords--and
spiritual ones too--were as kindly thoughtful of their inferiors as your
Lordship."
"Ah, how little one can do at the best!" said the Earl. "Life is full
of miseries for these poor serfs; shall we, who would follow Christ's
steps, not strive to lighten it?"
"It is very truth," said the Prior.
"Ay, and how short the boundary is!" pursued the Earl. "`Man is
ignorant what was before him; and what shall be after him, who can tell
him?' It may be, the next lord of these lands will be a hard man, who
will oppress his serfs, or at any rate take no care for their comfort.
Poor souls! let them be happy as long as they can."
"When I last saw your Lordship, you seemed to think that short boundary
too long for your wishes."
"It is seven years since that," answered the Earl. "It hardly seems so
far away now. And lately, Father--I scarcely can tell how--I have
imagined that my life will not be long. It makes me the more anxious to
do all I can ere `the night cometh in which no man can work.'"
The Prior looked critically and anxiously at his patron. The seven
years which he had passed in sorrowful loneliness had aged him more than
seven years ought to have done. He was not fifty yet, but he was
beginning to look like an old man. The burden and heat of the day were
telling on him sadly.
"Right, my Lord," replied the Prior; "yet let me beg of your Lordship
not to over-weary yourself. Your life is a precious thing to all
dependent on you, and not less to us, your poor bedesmen here."
"Ah, Father! is my life precious to any one?" was the response, with a
sad smile.
"Indeed it is," answered the Prior earnestly. "As your Lordship has
just said, he who shall come after you may be harsh and unkind, and your
poor serfs may sorely feel the change. No man has a right to throw away
life, my Lord, and you have much left to live for."
Perhaps the Earl had grown a little morbid. Was it any wonder if he
had? He shook his head.
"We have but one life," continued the Prior, "and it is our duty to make
the best of it--that is, to do God's will with it. And when it is God's
will to say unto us, `Come up higher,' we may be sorry that we have
served Him no better, but not, I think, that we have given no more time
to our own ease, nor even to our own sorrows."
"And yet," said the Earl, resting his head upon one hand, "one gets
very, very tired sometimes of living."
"Cannot we trust our Father to call us to rest when we really need it?"
asked the Prior. "Nor is it well that in looking onward to the future
glory we should miss the present rest to be had by coming to Him, and
casting all our cares and burdens at His feet."
"Does He always take them?"
"Always--if we give them. But there is such a thing as asking Him to
take them, and holding them out to Him, and yet keeping fast hold of the
other end ourselves. He will hardly take what we do not give."
The Earl looked earnestly into his friend's eyes.
"Father, I will confess that these seven years--nay! what am I saying?
these eight-and-twenty--I have not been willing that God should do His
will. I wanted my will done. For five-and-forty years, ever since I
could lisp the words, I have been saying to Him with my lips, _Fiat
voluntas tua_. But only within the last few days have I really said to
Him in my heart, Lord, have Thy way. It seemed to me--will you think it
very dreadful if I confess it?--that I wanted but one thing, and that it
was very hard of God not to let me have it. I did not say such a thing
in words; I could talk fluently of being resigned to His will, but down
at the core of my heart I was resigned to everything but one, and I was
not resigned to that at all. And I think I only became resigned when I
gave over trying and working at resignation, and sank down, like a tired
child, at my Father's feet. But now I am very tired, and I would fain
that my Father would take me up in His arms."
The Prior did not speak. He could not. He only looked very sorrowfully
into the worn face of the heart-wearied man, with a conviction which he
was unable to repress, that the time of the call to come up higher was
not far away. He would have been thankful to disprove his conclusion,
but to stifle it he dared not.
"I hope," said the Earl in the same low tone, "that there are quiet
corners in Heaven where weary men and women may lie down and rest a
while at our Lord's feet. I feel unfit to take a place all at once in
the angelic choir. Not unready to praise--I mean not that--only too
weary, just at first, to care for anything but rest."
There were tears burning under the Prior's eyelids; but he was silent
still. That was not his idea of Heaven; but then he was less weary of
earth. He felt almost vexed that the only passage of Scripture which
would come to him was one utterly unsuited to the occasion--"They rest
not day nor night." Usually fluent and fervent, he was tongue-tied just
then.
"Did Christ our Lord need the rest of His three days and nights in the
grave?" suggested the Earl, thoughtfully. "He must have been very weary
after the agony of His cross. I think He must have been very tired of
His life altogether. For was it not one passion from Bethlehem to
Calvary? And He could hardly have been one of those strong men who
never seem to feel tired. Twice we are told that He was weary--when He
sat on the well, and when He slept in the boat. Father, I ought to ask
your pardon for speaking when I should listen, and seeming to teach
where I ought to be taught."
"Nay, my Lord, say not so, I pray you." The Prior found his voice at
last. "I have learned to recognise my Master's voice, whether I hear it
from the rostrum of the orator or from the lowly hovel of the serf. And
it is not the first time that I have heard it in yours."
The Earl looked up with an expression of surprise, and then shook his
head again with a smile.
"Nay, good Father, flatter me not so far."
He might have added more, but the sound of an iron bar beaten on a
wooden board announced the hour of supper. The Earl conversed almost
cheerfully with the Prior and his head officers during supper; and
Ademar remarked to the Cellarer that he had not for a long while seen
his master so like his old self.
The first of October rose clear and bright. At Berkhamsted, the ladies
were spending the morning in examining the contents of a pedlar's
well-stocked pack, and buying silk, lawn, furs, and trimmings for the
wedding. At Ashridge, the Earl was walking up and down the Priory
garden, looking over the dilapidations which time had wrought in his
monastery, and noting on his tables sundry items in respect of which he
meant to repair the ravages. At Romsey, Mother Margaret, in her black
patched habit and up-turned sleeves, was washing out the convent
refectory, and thereby, she fervently hoped, washing her sins out of
existence--without a thought of the chivalrous love which would have set
her high above all such menial labour, and would never have permitted
even the winds of heaven to "visit her cheek too roughly." Did it never
occur to her that she might have allowed the Redeemer of men to "make
her salvation" for her, and yet have allowed herself to make her
husband's life something better to him than a weary burden?
The day's work was over, and the recreation time had come. The Prior of
Ashridge tapped at the door of the guest-chamber, and was desired to
enter.
He found the Earl turning over the leaves of his Psalter.
"Look here, Father," said the latter, pointing out the fifteenth verse
of the ninetieth Psalm.
"We are glad for the days wherein Thou didst humiliate us; the years
wherein we have seen evil."
"What does that mean?" said the Earl. "Is it that we thank God for the
afflictions He has given us? It surely does not mean--I hope not--that
our comfort is to last just as long as our afflictions have lasted, and
not a day longer."
"Ah, my Lord, God is no grudging giver," answered the Prior. "The verse
before it, methinks, will reply to your Lordship--`we exult and are glad
all our days.' All our earthly life have we been afflicted; all our
heavenly one shall we be made glad."
"Glad! I hardly know what the word means," was the pathetic reply.
"You will know it then," said the Prior.
"You will--but shall I? I have been such an unprofitable servant!"
"Nay, good my Lord, but are you going to win Heaven by your own works?"
eagerly demanded the Bonus Homo. "`Beginning in the spirit, are ye
consummated in the flesh?' Surely you have not so learned Christ. Hath
He not said, `Life eternal give I to them; and they shall not perish for
ever, and none shall snatch them out of My hand'?"
"True," said the Earl, bowing his head.
But this was Vaudois teaching. And though Earl Edmund, first of all men
in England, had drunk in the Vaudois doctrines, yet even in him they had
to struggle with a mass of previous teaching which required to be
unlearned--with all that rubbish of man's invention which Rome has built
up on the One Foundation. It was hard, at times, to keep the old ghosts
from coming back, and troubling by their shadowy presence the soul whom
Christ had brought into His light.
There was silence for a time. The Earl's head was bent forward upon his
clasped hands on the table, and the Prior, who thought that he might be
praying, forbore to disturb him. At length he said, "My Lord, the
supper-hour is come."
The Earl gave no answer, and the Prior thought he had dropped asleep.
He waited till the board was struck with the iron bar as the signal for
supper. Then he rose and addressed the Earl again. The silence
distressed him now. He laid his hand upon his patron's shoulder, but
there was no response. Gently, with a sudden and terrible fear, he
lifted the bowed head and looked into his face. And then he knew that
the weary heart was glad at last--that life eternal in His beatific
presence had God given to him. From far and near the physicians were
summoned that night, but only to tell the Prior what he already knew.
They stood round the bed on which the corpse had been reverently laid,
and talked of his mysterious disease in hard words of sonorous Latin.
It would have been better had they called it in simple English what it
was--a broken heart. Why such a fate was allotted to one of the best of
all our princes, He knows who came to bind up the broken-hearted, and
who said by the lips of His prophet, "Reproach hath broken mine heart."
Ademar was sent back to Berkhamsted with the woeful news. There was
bitter mourning there. It was not, perhaps, in many of the household,
unmixed with selfish considerations, for to a large proportion of them
the death of their master meant homelessness for the present, and to
nearly all sad apprehensions for the future. Yet there was a great deal
that was not selfish, for the gentle, loving, humane, self-abnegating
spirit of the dead had made him very dear to all his dependants, and
more hearts wept for him than he would ever have believed possible.
But there was one person in especial to whom it was felt the news ought
to be sent. The Prior despatched no meaner member of the Order, but
went himself to tell the dark tidings at Romsey.
He pleaded hard for a private interview with the Countess, but the
reigning Abbess of Romsey was a great stickler for rule, and she decided
that it was against precedent, and therefore propriety, that one of her
nuns should be thus singled out from the rest. The announcement must be
made in the usual way, to the whole convent, at vespers.
So, in the well-known tones of the Prior of Ashridge,--some time the
Earl's confessor, and his frequent visitor,--with the customary request
to pray for the repose of the dead, to the ears of Mother Margaret, as
she knelt in her stall with the rest, came the sound of the familiar
name of Edmund, Earl of Cornwall.
Very tender and pathetic was the tone in which the intimation was given.
The heart of the Prior himself was so wrung that he could not imagine
such a feeling as indifference in that of the woman who had been the
dearest thing earth held for that dead man. But if he looked down the
long row of black, silent figures for any sign or sound, he looked in
vain. There was not even a trembling of Mother Margaret's black veil as
her voice rose untroubled in the response with all the rest--
"_O Jesu dulcis! O Jesu pie!
O Jesu, Fili Maria!
Dona eis requiem_."
In the recreation-time which followed, the Prior sought out Mother
Margaret. He found her without difficulty, seated on a form at the side
of the room, talking to a sister nun, and he caught a few words of the
conversation as he approached.
"I assure thee, Sister Regina, it is quite a mistake. Mother Wymarca
told me distinctly that the holy Mother gave Sister Maud an unpatched
habit, and it is all nonsense in her to say there was a patch on the
elbow."
The Prior bit his lips, but he restrained himself, and sat down,
reverently saluted by both nuns as he did so. Was she trying to hide
her feelings? thought he.
"Sister Margaret, I brought you tidings," he said, as calmly as was in
him.
The nun turned upon him a pair of cold, steel-blue eyes, as calm and
irresponsive as if he had brought her no tidings whatever.
"I heard them, Father, if it please you. Has he left any will?"
The priest-nature in the Prior compelled him officially to avoid any
reprehension of this perfect monastic calm; but the human nature, which
in his case lay beneath it, was surprised and repelled.
"He has left a will, wherein you are fully provided for."
"Oh, that is nice!" said Mother Margaret, in tones of unquestionable
gratulation. "And how much am I to have? Of course I care about it
only for the sake of the Abbey."
The Prior had his private ideas on that point; for, as he well knew, the
vow of poverty was somewhat of a formality in the Middle Ages, since the
nun who brought to her convent a title and a fortune was usually not
treated in the same manner as a penniless commoner.
"The customary dower to a widow, Sister."
"Do you mean to say I am only to have my third? Well, I call that
shameful! And so fond of me as he always professed to be! I thought he
would have left me everything."
The Prior experienced a curious sensation in his right arm, which, had
Mother Margaret not been a woman, or had he been less of a Christian and
a Church dignitary, might have resulted in the measuring of her length
on the floor of the recreation-room. But she was totally unconscious of
any such feeling on his part. Her heart--or that within her which did
duty for one--had been touched at last.
"Well, I do call it disgraceful!" she repeated.
"And is that all?" asked the Prior involuntarily, and not by any means
in consonance with his duty as a holy priest addressing a veiled nun.
But priests and nuns have no business with hearts of any sort, and he
ought to have known this as well as she did.
"All?" she said, with a rather puzzled look in the frosty blue eyes. "I
would it had been a larger sum, Father; for the convent's sake, of
course."
"And am I to hear no word of regret, Sister, for the man to whom you
were all the world?"
This was, of course, a most shocking speech, considering the speaker and
the person whom he addressed; but it came warm from that inconvenient
heart which had no business to be beneath the Prior's cassock. Mother
Margaret was scandalised, and she showed it in her face, which awoke her
companion to the fact that he was not speaking in character. That a
professed nun should be expected to feel personal and unspiritual
interest in an extern! and, as if that were not enough, in a man!
Mother Margaret's sense of decorum was quite outraged.
"How could such thoughts trouble the blessed peace of a holy sister?"
she wished to know. "Pardon me, Father; I shall pray for his soul, of
course. What could I do more?"
And the Prior recognised at last that to the one treasure of that dead
man's heart, the news he brought was less than it had been to him.
He bit his lips severely. It was all he could do to keep from telling
her that the pure, meek, self-abnegating soul which had passed from
earth demanded far fewer prayers than the cold, hard, selfish spirit
which dwelt within her own black habit.
"It is I who require pardon, Sister," he said, in a constrained voice.
"May our Lord in His mercy forgive us all!"
He made no further attempt to converse with Mother Margaret. But, as he
passed her a few minutes later, he heard that she and Sister Regina had
gone back to the previous subject, which they were discussing with some
interest in their tones.
"O woman, woman!" groaned the Prior, in his heart; "the patch on Sister
Maud's elbow is more to thee than all the love thou hast lost. Ah, my
dear Lord! it is not you that I mourn. You are far better hence."
From which speech it will be seen that the Bonus Homo was very far from
being a perfect monk.
The actions of Mother Margaret admirably matched her words. She gave
herself heart and soul to the important business of securing her
miserable third of her dead lord's lands and goods. Not till they were
safe in her possession did she allow herself any rest.
Did the day ever come when her feelings changed? During the ten years
which she outlived the man who had loved her with every fibre of his
warm, great heart, did her heart ever turn regretfully, when Abbesses
were harsh or life was miserable, to the thought of that tender,
faithful love which, so far as in it lay, would have sheltered her life
from every breath of discomfort? Did she ever in all those ten years
whisper to herself--
"Oh, if he would but come again,
I think I'd vex him so no more!"