A Forgotten Hero Part 25

IN THE CITY OF GOLD.

"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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d's will with it. And when it is G.o.d'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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sion 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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs 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 G.o.d 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, G.o.d 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 h.o.m.o. "'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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 ma.s.s 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 G.o.d 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.