"I thought," said Belasez, combing out her own hair very energetically,
"that I had at last found even a Christian priest who was worthy of him
of whom the Bishop of Lincoln preached,--him whom you believe to be
Messiah."
"Then," said Doucebelle, greatly delighted, "thou wilt listen to Father
Bruno, if he talks to thee?"
"I would not if I could help it," was Belasez's equivocal answer.
"Belasez, I cannot quite understand thee. Sometimes thou seemest so
different from what thou art at other times."
"Because I am different. Understand me! Do I understand myself? The
Holy One--to whom be praise!--He understands us all."
"But sometimes thou art willing to hear and talk, and at others thou art
close shut up like a coffer."
"Because that is how I feel."
"I wish thou wouldst tell thy feelings to Father Bruno."
"I shall wait till he asks me, I think," said Belasez a little drily.
"Well, I am sure he will."
"I am not sure that he will--twice."
"Why, what wouldst thou say to him?"
"He will hear if he wants to know."
And Belasez thereupon "shut up like a coffer," and seemed to have lost
her tongue for the remainder of the night.
Doucebelle determined that, if she could possibly contrive it, without
wounding the feelings of Father Nicholas, her next confession should be
made to Father Bruno. He seemed to her to be a man made of altogether
different metal from his colleagues. Master Aristoteles kept himself
entirely to physical ailments, and never heard a confession, except from
the sick in emergency. Father Nicholas was a very easy confessor, for
his thoughts were usually in his beloved study, and whatever the
confession might be, absolution seemed to follow as a matter of course.
If his advice were asked on any point outside philology in all its
divisions, he generally appeared to be rather taken by surprise, and
almost as much puzzled as his penitent. His strongest reproof was--
"Ah, that was wrong, my child. Thou must not do that again."
So that confession to Father Nicholas, while eminently comfortable to a
dead soul, was anything but satisfying to a living one.
Father Warner was a terrible confessor. His minute questions penetrated
into every corner of soul and body. He took nothing for granted, good
nor bad. Absolution was hard to get from him, and not to be had on any
terms but those of severe penance. And yet it seemed to Doucebelle that
there was an inner sanctuary of her heart from which he never even tried
to lift the veil, a depth in her nature which he never approached. Was
it because there was no such depth in his, and therefore he necessarily
ignored its existence in another?
In one way or another, they were all miserable comforters. She wished
to try Father Bruno.
Most unwittingly, Father Nicholas helped her to gain her end by
requesting a holiday. He had heard a rumour that a Latin manuscript had
been discovered in the library of Saint Albans' Abbey, and Father
Nicholas, in whose eyes the lost books of Livy were of more consequence
than any thing else in the world except the Order of Saint Benedict, was
unhappy till he had seen the manuscript.
The Countess, in the Earl's absence, readily granted his request, and
Doucebelle's fear of hurting the feelings of her kind-hearted though
careless old friend were no longer a bar in the way of consulting Father
Bruno.
Father Warner, who was confessing the other half of the household,
growled his disapprobation when Doucebelle begged to be included in the
penitents of Father Bruno.
"Something new always catches a silly girl's fancy!" said he.
But Doucebelle had no scruple about hurting his feelings, since she did
not believe in their existence. So when her turn came, she knelt down
in Bruno's confessional.
At first she wondered if he were about to prove like Father Nicholas,
for he did not ask her a single question till she stopped of herself.
Then, instead of referring to any thing which she had said, he put one
of weighty import.
"Daughter, what dost thou know of Jesus Christ?"
"I know," said Doucebelle, "that He came to take away the sins of the
world, and I humbly trust that He will take away mine."
"That He will?" repeated Bruno. "Is it not done already?"
"I thought, Father, that it would be done when I die."
"What has thy dying to do with that? If it be done at all, it was done
when He died."
"Then where are my sins, Father?" asked Doucebelle, feeling very much
astonished. This was a new doctrine to her. But Bruno was an
Augustinian, and well read in the writings of the Founder of his Order.
"They are where God cannot find them, my child. Therefore there is
little fear of thy finding them. Understand me,--if thou hast laid them
upon Christ our Lord."
"I know I have," said Doucebelle in a low voice.
"Then on His own authority I assure thee that He has taken them."
"Father I may I really believe that?"
"May! Thou must, if thou wouldst not make God a liar."
"But what, then, have I to do?"
"What wouldst thou do for me, if I had rescued thee from a burning
house, and lost my own life in the doing of it?"
"I could do nothing," said Doucebelle, feeling rather puzzled.
"Wouldst thou love or hate me?"
"O Father! can there be any question?"
"And supposing there were some thing left in the world for which thou
knewest I had cared--a favourite dog or cat--wouldst thou leave it to
starve, or take some care of it?"
"I think," was Doucebelle's earnest answer, "I should care for it as
though it were my own child."
"Then, daughter, see thou dost that for Him who did lose His own life in
rescuing thee. Love Him with every fibre of thine heart, and love what
He has loved for His sake. He has left with thee those for whom on
earth He cared most,--the poor, the sick, the unhappy. Be they unto
thee as thy dearest, and He the dearest of all."
This was very unlike any counsel which Doucebelle had ever before
received from a confessor. There was something here of which she could
take hold. Not that Father Bruno had suggested a new course of action
so much as that he had supplied a new motive power. To do good, to give
alms, to be kind to poor and sick people, Doucebelle had been taught
already: but the reason for it was either the abstract notion that it
was the right thing to do, or that it would help to increase her little
heap of human merit.
To all minds, but in particular to an ignorant one, there is an enormous
difference between the personal and the impersonal. Tell a child that
such a thing must be done because it is right, and the motive power is
faint and vague, not unlikely to be overthrown by the first breath of
temptation. But let the child understand that to do this thing will
please or displease God, and you have supplied a far stronger energising
power, in the intelligible reference to the will of a living Person.
Doucebelle felt this--as, more or less, we all do.
"Father," she said, after a momentary pause, "I want your advice."
"State thy perplexity, my daughter."
"I hope, Father, you will not be angry; but a few days ago, when you and
the other priests were talking in the ante-chamber about Belasez, the
door was open, and we heard every word in the bower."
"Did Belasez hear what was said?"
"Yes."
"Ha! What did she say?"
"I asked her, at night, whether what you had said had wounded her. And
she said, No: but she thought there was one Christian priest who was
like what the Scripture described Christ to be."
"Did she say that?" There was a tone of tender regret in the priest's
voice.
"She did. But, Father, I want to know how to deal with Belasez.
Sometimes she will talk to me quite freely, and tell me all her thoughts
and feelings: at other times I cannot get a word out of her."
"Let her alone at the other times. What is the state of her mind?"
"She seems to have been very much struck, Father, with a sermon from
your Bishop, wherein he proved out of her own Scriptures, she says, that
our Lord is the Messiah whom the Jews believe. But I do not know if she
has reached any point further than that. I think she hardly knows what
to believe."
"Only those sermons do good which God preaches," said Bruno. Perhaps he
spoke rather to himself than to Doucebelle. "Whenever the maiden will
speak to thee, do not repulse her. Lead her, to the best of thy power,
to see that Christ is God's one cure for all evil. Yet He must teach it
first to thyself."
"I think He has done so--a little," answered Doucebelle. "But, Father,
will you not speak to her?"
"My child, we will both wait upon God, and speak the words He gives us,
at the time He will. And remember,--whatever blunders men make,--
Belasez is, after the flesh, nearer akin to Him than thou art. She is
the kinswoman of the Lord Jesus. Let that thought spur thee on, if thou
faint by the way."
"Father! Our Lord was not a Jew?"
"He was a Jew, my daughter."
Hardly any news could more have amazed Doucebelle.
"But why then do people use them so harshly?"
"Thou hadst better ask the people," answered Bruno, drily.
"Father, is it right to use Jews so?"
"Thou hadst better ask the Lord."
"What does He say, Father?"
"He said, speaking to Abraham, the father of them all, `I will bless him
that blesseth thee, and curse him that curseth thee.'"
"Oh, I am so glad!" cried Doucebelle. "If you please, Father, I could
not help loving Belasez: but I tried hard not to do so, because I
thought it was wicked. It cannot be wrong to love a Jew, if Christ
Himself were one."
Bruno did not reply immediately. When he did, it was with a slight
quiver in his voice which surprised Doucebelle.
"It can never be wrong to love," he said. "But, daughter, let not thy
love stop at liking the maid's company. Let it go on till thou canst
take it into Heaven."
The strangest of all strange ideas was this to Doucebelle. She had been
taught that love was always a weakness, and only too frequently a sin.
That so purely earthly a thing could be taken into Heaven astonished her
beyond measure.
"Father!" she said, in a tone of mingled amazement and inquiry.
"What now, my daughter?"
"People always speak of love as weak, if not wicked."
"People often talk of what they do not understand, my child. `God is
love.' Think not, therefore, that God resembles a worldly fancy which
springs to-day, and fades away to-morrow. His is the heavenly love
which can never die, which is ready to sacrifice all things, which so
looks to the true welfare of the beloved that it will give thee any
earthly suffering rather than see thee sink into perdition by thy sins.
This is real love, daughter: and thou canst not sin in giving it to
Belasez or to any other."
"Yet, Father," said Doucebelle in a puzzled tone, "the religious give up
love when they go into the cloister. I do not understand. A Sister of
Saint Ursula may not leave her convent, even if her own mother lies
dying, and pleads hard to see her. And though some priests do wed,"--
this had not yet, in England, ceased to be the case--"yet people always
seem to think the celibate priests more holy, as if that were more in
accordance with the will of God. Yet God tells us to love each other.
I cannot quite understand."
If Doucebelle could have seen, as well as spoken, through the
confessional grating, assuredly she would have stopped sooner. For the
agony that was working in every line of Father Bruno's face would have
been terrible to her to see. But she only thought that it was a long
while before he answered her, and she wondered at the hard, constrained
tone in his voice.
"Child!" he said, "does any one but God `quite understand'? Do we
understand ourselves?--and how much less each other? It is only love
that understands. He who most loves God will best understand men. And
for the rest,--O Lord who hast loved us, pardon the blunders and
misunderstandings of Thy people, and save Thy servants that trust in
Thee!--Now go, my child,--unless thou hast more to say. _Absolvo te_."
Doucebelle rose and retired. But she did not know that Father Bruno
heard no more confessions. She only heard that he was not at home when
dinner was served; and when he appeared at supper, he looked very worn
and white, as if after a weary journey.