Earl Hubert's Daughter Part 32

"And dost thou invoke them?"

"Do you mean, pray to them?"

"Dost thou beg of them to intercede for thee?"

"No, indeed, not I!"

"Did I ever see such ignorance! And thou wilt not learn."

"I will learn of my father, and no one else. I am sure he does not believe half the rubbish you do."

"_Sancta Hilaria, or a pro n.o.bis_!"

"What language is that?" innocently asked Beatrice.

"The holy tongue, of course."

"It is not our holy tongue."

"Have Jews a holy tongue?" responded Eularia, in surprise.

"Yes, indeed,--Hebrew."

"I did not know they believed any thing to be holy. Have they any relics?"

"I do not know what those are."

Eularia led the way to the sacristy.

"Look here," she said, reverently opening a golden reliquary set with rubies. "Here is a small piece of the holy veil of our foundress, Saint Clare. This is the finger-bone of the blessed Evangelist Matthew. Here is a piece of the hoof of the holy a.s.s on which our Lord rode. Now thou knowest what relics are."

"But what can make you keep such things as those?" asked Beatrice, opening wide her l.u.s.trous eyes.

"And this," enthusiastically added Eularia, opening another reliquary set with emeralds and pearls, "is our most precious relic,--one of the small feathers from the wing of the holy angel, Saint Gabriel."

To the intense horror of Eularia, a silver laugh of unmistakable amus.e.m.e.nt greeted this holy relic.

"Beatrice! hast thou no reverence?"

"Not for angels' feathers," answered Beatrice, still laughing. "Well, I did think you had more sense!"

"I can a.s.sure thee, thou wilt shock Father Bruno if thou allowest thyself to commit such improprieties."

"I shall shock him, then. How excessively absurd!"

Eularia took her unpromising pupil out of the sacristy more hastily than she had led her in. And perhaps it was as well for Beatrice that Father Bruno arrived the next day.

They reached Bury Castle in safety. The Countess had been very much interested in Father Bruno's story, and most readily acceded to his request to leave Beatrice as her visitor until he should have a home to which he could take her. And Beatrice de Malpas, the daughter of a baronial house in Cheshire, was a very different person in the estimation of a Christian n.o.ble from Belasez, daughter of the Jew pedlar.

Rather to her surprise, she found herself seated above the salt, that is, treated as a lady of rank: and the embargo being over which had confined her to Margaret's apartments, she took her place at the Earl's table in the banquet-hall. Earl Hubert's quick eyes soon found out the addition to his supper-party, and he condescended to remark that she was extremely pretty, and quite an ornament to the hall. Beatrice herself was much pleased to find her old friend Doucebelle seated next to her, and they soon began to converse on recent events.

It is a curious fact as concerns human nature, that however long friends may have been parted, their conversation nearly always turns on what has happened just before they met again. They do not speak of what delighted or agonised them ten years ago, though the effect may have extended to the whole of their subsequent lives. They talk of last week's journey, or of yesterday's snow-storm.

Beatrice fully expected Doucebelle's sympathy on the subject of relics, and she was disappointed to find it not forthcoming. Doucebelle was rather inclined to be shocked than amused. The angel's feather, in her eyes, was provocative of any thing rather than ridicule: and Beatrice, who had antic.i.p.ated her taking the common-sense view of the matter, felt chilled by the result.

Life had fallen back into its old grooves at Bury Castle. Grief, with the Countess, was usually a pa.s.sionate, but also a transitory feeling.

Her extremely easy temper led her to get rid of a sorrow as soon as ever she could. Pain, whether mental or bodily, was in her eyes not a necessary discipline, but an unpleasant disturbance of the proper order of events. In fact, she was one of those persons who are always popular by reason of their gracious affability, but in whom, below the fair flow of sweet waters, there is a strong substratum of stony selfishness. She objected to people being in distress, not because it hurt them, but because it hurt her to see them. And the difference between the two, though it may scarcely show at times on the surface, lies in an entire and essential variety of the strata underneath.

It was only natural that, with this character, the Countess should expect others to be as little impressed by suffering as herself. She really had no conception of a disposition to which sorrow was not an easily-healed scratch, but a scar that would be carried to the grave.

In her eyes, the calamity which had happened to her daughter was a disappointment, undoubtedly, but one which she would find no difficulty in surmounting at all. There were plenty of other men in the world, quite as handsome, as amiable, as rich, and as n.o.ble, as Richard de Clare. If such a grief had happened to herself, she would have wept incessantly for a week, been low-spirited for a month, and in a year would have been wreathed with smiles, and arranging her trousseau for a wedding with another bridegroom. The only thing which could really have distressed her long, would have been if the vacant place in her life had _not_ been refilled.

But Margaret's character was of a deeper type. For her the world held no other man, and life's blossom once blighted, no second crop of happiness could grow, at least on the same tree. To such a character as this, the only possibility of throwing out fresh bloom is when the tree is grafted by the great Husbandman with amaranth from Heaven.

Yet it was not in Margaret's nature--it would have been in her mother's--to say much of what she felt. Outwardly, she showed no difference, except that her _coeur leger_ was gone, never to return.

She did not shut herself up and refuse to join in the employments or amus.e.m.e.nts of those around her. And the majority of those around never suspected that the work and the amus.e.m.e.nt alike had no interest for her, nor would ever have any: that she "could never think as she had thought, or be as she had been, again."

One person only perceived the truth, and that was because he was cast in a like mould. Bruno saw too plainly that the hope expressed by the Countess that "Magot was getting nicely over her disappointment" was not true,--never would be true. In his case the amaranth had been grafted in, and the plant was blossoming again. But there was no such hope for her, at least as yet.

Beatrice was unable to enter into Margaret's feelings, not so much through want of capacity as of experience. Eva was equally unable, being naturally at once of a more selfish and a less concentrated disposition: her mind would have been more easily drawn from her sorrow,--an important item of the healing process. Doucebelle came nearest; but as she was the most selfless of all, her grief in like case would have been rather for the sufferings of Richard than for her own.

Beatrice soon carried the relic question to her father for decision; though with some trepidation as to what he would say. If he should not agree with her, she would be sorely disappointed. Bruno's smile half rea.s.sured her.

"So thou canst not believe in the genuineness of these relics?" said he.

"Well, my child, so that thou hast full faith in Christ and His salvation, I cannot think it much matters whether thou believest a certain piece of stuff to be the veil of Saint Clare or not. Neither Saint Clare nor her veil is concerned in thine eternal safety."

"But Doucebelle seems almost shocked. She does believe in them."

"Perhaps it will not harm her--with the like proviso."

"But, Father!--the honour in which they hold these rags and bones seems to me like idolatry!"

"Then be careful thou commit it not."

"But _you_ do not worship such things?"

"Dear child, I find too much in Christ and in this perishing world, to have much time to think of them."

Beatrice was only half satisfied. She would have felt more contented had Bruno warmly disclaimed the charge. It was at the cost of some distress that she realised that what were serious essentials to her were comparatively trivial matters to him. The wafts of polluted air were only too patent to her, which were lost in the purer atmosphere, at the alt.i.tude where Bruno stood.

The girls were gathered together one afternoon in the ante-chamber of Margaret's apartments, and Bruno, who had come up to speak to his daughter, was with them. Except in special cases, no chamber of any house was sacred from a priest. Eva was busy spinning, but it would be more accurate to say that Marie, who was supposed to be spinning also, was engaged in breaking threads. Margaret was employed on tapestry-work; Doucebelle in plain sewing; and Beatrice with her delicate embroidery.

"Father," said Beatrice, looking up suddenly, "I was taught that it was sin to make images of created things, on account of the words of the second commandment. What do you say?"

"'_Non fades tibi sculptile, neque omnem similitudinem_,'" murmured Bruno, reflectively. "I think, my child, that it depends very much on the meaning of '_tibi_' Ah, I see in thy face thou hast learned no Latin. 'Thou shalt not make _to thee_ any sculptured image.' Then a sculptured image may be made otherwise. The latter half of the commandment, I think, shows what is meant. '_Non adorabis ea, neque coles_'--'thou shalt not worship them.' At the same time, Saint Paul saith, '_Omne autem, quod non est ex fide, peccatum est_'--'all that is not of faith is sin;' and '_nisi ei qui existimat quid commune esse, illi commune est_': namely, 'to him who esteemeth a thing unclean, to him it is unclean.' If thou really believest it sin, by no means allow thyself to do it."

"But, Father, suppose we cannot be sure?" said Doucebelle.

"Thou needst not fear that thou wilt ever walk _too_ close to Christ, daughter," quietly answered Bruno.