LEO AND THE VANDALS.
For three days no news from Rome reached the villa on the Sabine hills.
To Damaris and Ethne they were days of solitude spent in prayer for their
beloved and for Rome. They prayed the “Our Father,” the great prayer of
Christendom, over and over, engraving the unfathomable meanings of its
simplicity deeper and deeper into their hearts. And “after that manner
they prayed always,” every petition pervaded by the “Our Father.” And so
the childlike asking for the daily bread and daily forgiveness became
possible and real; the solitude of the prayer to “_My Father Who seeth
in secret_,” ordained in the Divine ritual, expanded into Our Father’s
all-embracing heaven, into the boundlessness of the One Family, into
the _Our_ of the most solitary Christian prayer. Also, they prayed the
collects of Leo, humble, grand, and simple, the “Grant us the spirit to
think and do always such things as be rightful;” the prayer to the Pilot
of the Church and of each faithful soul, sure to be at the helm through
every storm—“Grant that the course of this world may be so peacefully
ordered by Thy governance, that Thy Church may serve Thee in all godly
quietness.”
These especially for this earth, and then looking beyond to the results
in heaven—“Almighty and merciful God, of whose only gift it cometh that
Thy faithful people do unto Thee true and laudable service, grant, we
beseech Thee, that we may so faithfully serve Thee in this life, that we
fail not finally to attain Thy heavenly promises, through the merits of
Jesus Christ our Lord.”
And perhaps oftenest of all they offered up that prayer of Leo’s which,
intertwining commands and promises, unfolds the depths of both command
and promise for earth and heaven—“Almighty and everlasting God, give unto
us the increase of faith, hope, and charity; and that we may obtain that
which Thou dost promise, make us to love that which Thou dost command.”
Thus, often resting their hearts on the staff of Leo’s faithful words,
the two women lived through those days of terrible suspense. And on the
fourth came the good tidings, that once more, as far as possible, Leo
had saved Rome. The messenger told how the peaceful procession of the
clergy, the great Bishop leading them, had gone forth from the gates of
the defenceless city, along the Ostian Way, and had met the Vandal king.
Less merciful than the Huns, Genseric had yet been moved as never before
by that stately, saintly presence, and although he would not relinquish
the plunder of the city, he gave orders to his soldiers that there
should be no torture of the captives, no slaughter of the unresisting,
nor any setting of the buildings on fire.
Marius and Fabricius were still determined that they must not leave as
long as they had any chance of helping the miserable, plundered citizens,
or were able in any way to mediate, counsel, or sustain.
Ethne could scarcely wish them to do otherwise, and the anguish of
suspense had to be borne. It was reported that the nobles were to be
taken captive, and sold into slavery in Africa; and who could say that
Marius and Fabricius would escape?
A necessity for fresh air and movement came over Ethne; child of the
hills and woods, for her the companionship of the mountains and the
streams was as that of familiar friends. At first she hesitated to leave
Damaris alone, until persuaded by her entreaties.
“Go forth, my daughter,” she said, “among the hills and brooks; thine
eyes are always opened to see the well-springs, as thou liftest up the
thirsting.”
And Ethne went, usually accompanied by the two people of her own race
in the household, Nurse Fedelm and Dewi, and by the great deer-hound.
The first day she sought and found no companionship save the streams and
the rivers rushing down the crags; the very sound of the water seemed to
refresh her like a draught from the cup of life. But the next day she
ventured to the ruins of Nero’s villa, to the place whence they had
seen the pagan temple crowning the heights and the rude cross of torture
planted on the little hill.
It was evening again, as when she went there before with her husband. The
temple shone golden in the evening glow, and the cross was reddened with
the rays of the dying sun. Ethne was half hoping to see the hermit again
once more, when to her delight she perceived the kneeling form in the
dark robe with the sheepskin capote, the arms clasped around the cross.
She went forward and knelt beside him, whilst Fedelm and Dewi stood at
some distance behind. After a time the hermit rose. His face lit up as he
recognized Ethne.
“But where is thy husband, my daughter?” he asked.
“In Rome, father!” she said.
“But they say those savages, the Arian Vandals, are plundering and
sacking Rome, my child, and that the city lies a defenceless prey in
their hands.”
“He stays because Rome _is_ defenceless. Pray for him!” she implored.
“I will pray for him night and day,” was the reply.
“You are a priest?” she said.
“A deacon and servant of Christ and His Christians, as far as may be,”
he replied. “Bishop Leo wrote to the Bishops of Campagna, that the
priesthood should not be degraded by the ordination of slaves, and I, as
thou knowest, was a slave and a fugitive.”
“Bishop Leo has once more saved Rome,” Ethne said, “as far as Rome can be
saved.”
“I know,” the hermit said; “I pray for the Bishop constantly, often in
his own words. It is not because he despises the slave, but because he
honours the ministry of the Lord, that he refuses a slave the priesthood.
For, alas! often slavery does degrade the slave unutterably; and also,”
he added, in a low, deep voice, “the master.”
“Our Master took the form of a slave,” she said, “and He knows the heart
of a slave. I also, father, was once a captive and in bondage. I think
nothing teaches like suffering; and that kind of suffering I suppose Leo
does not know.”
The hermit was silent a few moments, and then once more, as on that other
evening, looking up at the rude weather-beaten cross, he said, with tears
in his eyes—
“_Lady, thou hast understood._” Then, seeing her worn, wearied look, he
added, “Wilt thou come with thy people into my cave? I have bread and
raisins, if thou wilt deign to partake of them; the peasants around are
good to me and bring me food; and close beside is a spring of pure water.”
She went with him. An abundant fountain gushed out of the rock just
outside the cave, afterwards plashing in a waterfall over the rocks.
“It is one of the springs which feed the Aqua Claudia,” he said.
She smiled.
“Then it has baptized my little Paul,” she said. “Thou hast sent forth
thy contribution to the sacred font of the Lateran.”
“Thou hast a little Paul?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, “a little Paul, who is, I trust, to tread in the steps
of the great Paul, who wrote the letter about the fugitive slave, ‘his
own son in the faith, his brother beloved.’”
His voice quivered as he replied—
“I shall pray every evening and morning for that little Paul.”
“As we pray night and morning for the slaves,” she said, “that they may
be gathered into the Church as brothers beloved by Christ and by us.”
Then he told her that his cave was supposed to be a haunted cave.
“The peasants think it is the oracle of a faun,” he said, “one of their
old forest gods. And still sometimes they come to consult the old deities
here. They seek to know the future, if perchance there is any escape for
them out of their miseries, which are many. They think they are seeking
the old dethroned gods whom their fathers worshipped, in what they think
were happier times. But their poor hearts are really thirsting, not for
the dead heroes, but for the living God; not for the unhuman fauns, but
for the human Saviour. And often they will listen to me when I speak to
them of the Christ Who died and is not dead. And I tell them His words,
‘Come unto Me, all that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you
rest.’ And they, being often wearied sore, and overladen, come, and
coming, they find rest, for they find Him.”
“I also came here to-day weary and heavy-laden,” she said, “and I go away
comforted and at rest.”
“Thou hast not only come to Him, my daughter,” he said, “but thou hast
taken His yoke upon thee, which is ‘not my will but Thine!’ His yoke,”
he added, “is not indeed always easy, but it is always good. It is the
yoke of the plough which shall make thy fields fruitful; the yoke of the
water-carrier who brings refreshment wherever he goes. His burdens are
not always light, as we understand lightness; but they are burdens which
do not hinder, but help. They make the feet ‘swifter,’ not slower, on His
ways.”
He spoke with a Greek accent that reminded her of Damaris.
“Thou, like myself, art not of this land,” she said.
“I was from Athens,” he replied. “My mother-tongue was the language in
which the great Paul wrote.”
“Thou speakest the words of the gospels as in a mother-tongue,” she said.
“From thy lips they seem to drop into my heart fresh from the fountain,
with no aqueduct between.”
And as she rose to go away, he said—
“I shall pray constantly for thy little Paul, and for thy husband, and
for thee.”
When she returned, Damaris rejoiced at the light in her face.
“Thou hast been among thy fountains!” she said with a smile.
“I have been among _thy_ fountains,” Ethne replied. “I have had water
given me to drink from the fountain of thy mother-tongue.”
Another day Ethne resolved to visit once more the farm among the hills,
where she had seen the ruddy, happy children, the free, frank, soldierly
man with the graceful, dark-eyed young wife, whose face seemed to her
familiar, as a strain of music heard long ago. She found the young mother
drawing water with a pitcher from the well near the house, her children
laughing around her, and helping her to pour the water into a trough for
the sheep which were clustering near. Her dark eyes brightened in kindly
recognition, and all at once the likeness in her face flashed upon Ethne.
“Rachel!” she exclaimed, “Rachel at the well!”
“Rachel is my name,” the stranger said; “but how couldst thou know me?”
“I did not know thee,” Ethne said, “but I knew thy mother, Miriam, the
wife of Eleazar.”
The young mother laid her pitcher on the brim of the well, and knelt down
by its side, and clasping her hands in adoration, she looked up to heaven.
“God of our fathers—Father of our Christ,” she said, “Thou hast heard me
at last.”
“He has heard thee all the time,” said Ethne, “thee, and thy father and
mother, who have sought thee from land to land, and prayed for thee day
and night.”
“Where are they?” Rachel asked.
“Alas! they are in wretched, captive, plundered Rome,” Ethne said; “but
pray on. The God of thy fathers, the Father of thy Christ and ours, is
hearing still.”
Rachel insisted on Ethne’s coming into the cottage with the nurse and
Dewi and the dog, and nothing could satisfy her till they had all
partaken of her goat’s-milk cheeses, and the flat, Oriental loaves which
she baked on the wood fire.
As they were eating, the soldierly husband came in from the fields, and
then all their story unfolded itself.
There had been a rising of the people in the city in Asia Minor where
Rachel was born, in consequence of some wild calumny about the massacre
of a Christian child, and a Roman force had come to restore order. All
the Jews in the place had been banished, and some of them had been sold
into captivity. Among the captives, Rachel, then a child of twelve, had
fallen to the share of a Roman centurion, a brave, simple man, whose
mother was of Gothic race.
“He had compassion on me,” Rachel said; “he is the gentlest and bravest
of men. He had a little sister about my age. He brought me home to his
father’s house and lands among these hills. They were Christians, and
welcomed me as one of the people of their Christ, and I also became a
Christian, and was baptized. In a few years I became the wife of their
son, my deliverer.”
Then Ethne told her all she knew of Miriam and Eleazar; and with the
promise that Rachel would come to see her in her own home, she returned
to Damaris and her little Paul.
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