A Forgotten Hero Part 20

"Thus far I did--that I thought He would finish what He had begun. But all my life--so far as this earthly life is concerned--I have been striving for one aim, and it has come to utter wreck. I set one object before me, and I thought--I _thought_ it was G.o.d's will that I should pursue it. If He, by some act of His own providence, had shown me the contrary, I could have understood it better. But He has let men step in and spoil all. It is not He, but they who have brought about this wreck. My barge is not shattered by the winds and waves of G.o.d, but scuttled by the violence of pirates. My life is spoiled, and I do not understand why. I have done nothing but what I thought He intended me to do: I have set my heart on one thing, but it was a thing that I believed He meant to give me. It is all mystery to me."

"What is spoiled, my Lord? Is it what G.o.d meant you to do, or what you meant G.o.d to do?"

The sand grew to a larger heap in the hour-gla.s.s before another word was spoken.

"Father," said the Prince at last, "have I been intent on following my own will, when I thought I was pursuing the Lord's will for me? Father Bevis thinks so: he gave me some very hard words before I came here. He accuses me of idolatry; of loving the creature more than the Creator-- nay, of setting up my will and aim, and caring nothing for those of the Lord. In his eyes, I ought to have perceived years ago that G.o.d called me to a life apart with Him, and to have detached my heart from all but Himself and His Church. Father, it is hard enough to realise the wreck of all a man hoped and longed for: yet it is harder to know that the very hope was sin, that the longing was contrary to the Divine purpose for me. Have I so misunderstood my life? Have I so misunderstood my Master?"

The expression of the Prior's eyes was very pitying and full of tenderness. Hard words were not what he thought needed as the medicine for that patient. They were only to be expected from Father Bevis, who had never suffered the least pang of that description of pain.

"My Lord," answered the Prior, gently, "it is written of the wicked man, 'Thou hast removed Thy judgments from his eyes.' They are not to be seen nor fathomed by him. And to a great extent it is equally true of the righteous man. Man must not look to be able to comprehend the ways of G.o.d--they are above him. It is enough for him if he can walk submissively in them."

"I wonder," said the Earl, still pursuing his own train of thought, "if I ought to have been a monk. I never imagined it, for I never felt any vocation. It seemed to me that Providence called me to a life entirely different. Have I made an utter blunder all my life? I cannot think it."

"There is no need to think it, my Lord. We cannot all be monks, even if we would. And why should we? It might, perhaps, be better for you to think one other thing."

"What?" asked the Earl, with more appearance of interest than he had hitherto shown.

"That what you suppose to be the spoiling of your life is just what G.o.d intended for you."

The Earl's face grew dark. "What! that all my life long He was leading me up to _this_?"

"It looks like it," said the Prior, quietly.

"Oh! but why?"

"Now, my Lord, you go beyond me. Neither you nor I can guess that. But He knows."

"Yes, I suppose He knows." But the consideration did not seem to comfort him as it had done before when suggested by Father Bevis.

"Perhaps," said the Prior again, softly, "there was no other way for your Lordship to the gate of the Holy City. He leads us by diverse ways; some through the flowery mead, and some over the desert sands where no water is. But of all it is written, 'He led them forth by the right way, that they might reach the haven of their desire.' Would your Lordship have preferred the mead and have missed the haven?"

"No," answered the Earl, firmly.

"Remember that you hold G.o.d's promise that when you awake up after His likeness you shall be satisfied with it. And he is not satisfied with his purchase who accounts it to have cost more than it was worth."

"Will your figure hold if pressed further?" said the Earl, with a wintry smile. "The purchase may be worth a thousand marks, but if I have but five hundred in the world I shall starve to death before the gem is mine."

"No, my Lord, it will not hold. For you cannot pay the price of that gem. The cost of it was His who will keep it safe for you, so that you cannot fling it away in mistake or folly. Figures must fail somewhere; and we want another in this case. My Lord, you are the gem, and the heavenly Graver is fashioning on you the King's likeness. Will you stay His hand before it is perfect?"

"I would it were near perfection!" sighed the Earl.

"Perhaps it is," said the Prior, gently. "Remember, it is your Father who is graving it."

The Earl's lip quivered. "If one could but know when it would be done!

If one might know that in seven years--ten years--it would be complete, and one's heart and brain might find rest! But to think of its going on for twenty, thirty, forty--"

"They will look short enough, my Lord, when they are over."

"True. But not while they are pa.s.sing."

"Nay, 'No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous.' Yet 'faint not when thou art rebuked of Him.'"

"It is the going on, that is so terrible!" said the Earl, almost under his breath. "If one might die when one's hope dies! Father, do you know anything of that?"

"In this world, my Lord, I dug a grave in mine own heart for all my hopes, forty years ago."

"And can you look back on that time calmly?"

"That depends on what you mean by calmness. Trustfully, yes; indifferently, no."

"Yet the religious say that G.o.d requires their affections to be detached from the world. That must produce deadness of feeling."

"My Lord, there is such a thing as being alive from the dead. That is what G.o.d requires. If we tarry at the dying, we shall stop short of His perfection. We are to be dead to sin; but I nowhere find in Scripture that we are to die to love and happiness. That is man's gloss upon G.o.d's precept."

"Is that what you teach in your valleys?"

"We teach G.o.d's Word," said the Vaudois Prior. "Alas! for the men that have made it void through their tradition! 'If they speak not according thereunto, it is because there is no light in them.'"

"And you learn--" suggested the Earl in a more interested tone.

"We learn that G.o.d requires of His servants that they shall overcome the world; and He has told us what He means by the world--'The l.u.s.t of the flesh, and the l.u.s.t of the eyes, and the pride of life.' Whatever has become that to me, that am I to overcome, if I would reign with Christ when He cometh."

We Protestants can hardly understand the fearful extent to which Rome binds the souls of her votaries. When she goes so far--which she rarely does--as to hold out G.o.d's Word with one hand, she carries in the other an antidote to it which she calls the interpretation of the Church, derived from the consent of the Fathers. That the Fathers scarcely ever consent to anything does not trouble her. According to this interpretation, all human affection comes for monk or nun under the head of the l.u.s.ts of the flesh. [Note 3.] A daughter's love for her mother, a father's for his child, is thus branded. From his cradle Earl Edmund had been taught this; was it any marvel if he found it impossible to get rid of the idea? The Prior's eyes were less blinded. He had come straight from those Piedmontese valleys where, from time immemorial, the Word of G.o.d has not been bound, and whosoever would has been free to slake his thirst at the pure fountain of the water of life. Love was not dead in his heart, and he was not ashamed of it.

"But then, Father, you must reckon all love a thing to be left behind?"

very naturally queried the Earl.

"It will not be so in Heaven," answered the Prior; "then why should it be on earth? Left behind! Think you I left behind me the one love of my life when I became a Bonus h.o.m.o? I trow not. My Lord, forty years ago this summer, I was a young man, just entering life, and betrothed to a maiden of the Val Pellice. G.o.d laid His hand upon my hopes of earthly happiness, and said, 'Not so!' But must I, therefore, sweep my Adelaide's memory out of my heart as if I had never loved her, and hold it sin against G.o.d to bear her sweet face in tender remembrance? Nay, verily, I have not so learned Christ."

"What happened?" said the Earl.

"G.o.d sent His angels for her," answered the Prior in a low voice.

"Ah, but she loved you!" was the response, in a tone still lower. The Earl did not know how much, in those few words, he told the Prior of Ashridge.

"My Lord," said the Prior, "did you ever purchase a gift for one you loved, and keep it by you, carefully wrapped up, not letting him know till the day came to produce it?"

The Earl looked up as if he did not see the object of the question; but he answered in the affirmative.

"It may be," continued the Prior, "that G.o.d our Father does the same at times. I believe that many will find gifts on their Father's table, at the great marriage-feast of the Lamb, which they never knew they were to have, and some which they fancied were lost irrevocably on earth. And if there be anything for which our hearts cry out that is not waiting for us, surely He can and will still the craving."

The Prior scarcely realised the effect of his words. He saw afterwards that the most painful part of the Earl's grief was lightened, that the terrible strain was gone from his eyes. He thanked G.o.d and took courage. He did not know that he had, to some extent, given him back the most precious thing he had lost--hope. He had only moved it further off--from earth to Heaven; and, if more distant, yet it was safer there.

The Prior left the Earl alone after that interview--alone with the Evangelisterium and the Psalter. The words of G.o.d were better for him than any words of men.

He stayed at Ashridge for about a fortnight, and then, to the ecstasy of Sir Reginald, issued orders for return to Berkhamsted. Only a few words pa.s.sed between the Prior and his patron as they took leave of each other at the gate.

"Farewell, Father, and many thanks. You have done me good--as much good as man can do me now."