In Convent Walls Part 42

Must it ever be so in this life, till we come to that last time of all when, setting forth on the voyage to meet Christ our Lord, we yet say 'farewell' with a pang to them we leave behind?"

"I reckon so, dear heart," said I, sighing a little. "But Father Mortimer hath comforted me by words that he saith are from Holy Writ--to wit, that he which loveth G.o.d should love his brother likewise. I always wanted to love folks."

"And always did it, dear Mother," said Joan with a laugh, casting her arms around my neck, "for all those chains of old rules and dusty superst.i.tions which are ever clanking about you. And I am going to love you, whatever rules be to the contrary, and of whomsoever made. Oh, why did ill folks push you into this convent, when you might have come and dwelt with Ralph and me, and been such a darling grandmother to my little ones? There, now, I did not mean to make you look sorrowful. I will come and see you every year, if it be only for an hour's talk at the grating; and my Lady, who is soft-hearted as she is rough-tongued, will never forbid it, I know."

"Never forbid what, thou losenger?" [Flatterer.]

Joan turned round, laughing.

"Dear my Lady, you are ever where man looketh not for you. But I am sure you heard no ill of yourself. You will never forbid me to visit my dear Mother Annora; you love her, and you love me."

"Truly a pretty tale!" saith my Lady, pretending (as I could see) to look angry.

"Now don't try to be angered with me," said Joan, "for I know you cannot. Now I must go and pack my saddle-bags and mails." [Trunks.]

She went thence with her light foot, and my Lady looked somewhat sadly after her.

"I love thee, do I, child?" saith she in another tone. "Ah, if I do, thou owest it less to anything in thee than to the name they wed thee in. Help us, Mother of Mercy! Time was when I thought I, too, should one day have been a Greystoke. Well, well! G.o.d be merciful to us poor dreamers, and poor sinners too!"

Then, with slower step than she is wont, she went after Joan.

My child is gone, and I feel like a bereaved mother. I shall see her again, if it please G.o.d, but what a blank she has left! She says when next Lent comes, if G.o.d will, she will visit us, and maybe bring with her her little Laurentia, that she named after my lost love, because she had eyes like his. G.o.d bless her, my child Joan!

Sister Roberga set forth for Shuldham the same day, in company with Father Benedict, who desired to travel that road, and in charge of two of the brethren and of Sister Willa. I trust she may some day see her errors, and amend her ways: but I cannot felicitate the community at Shuldham on receiving her.

So now we shall slip back into our old ways, so far as can be under a Prioress who a.s.suredly will let none of us suffer the moss to grow upon her, body or soul, so far as she can hinder it. I hear her voice now beneath, in the lower corridor, crying to Sister Sigred, who is in the kitchen to-day--

"Did ever man or woman see the like? Burning seacoal on the kitchen-fire! Dost thou mean to poison us all with that ill smoke?

[Note 6.] And wood in the wood-house more than we shall use in half a year! Forty logs came in from the King only yesterday, and ten from my Lord of Lisle the week gone. Sister Sigred, when shall I put any sense in you?"

"I don't know, Madam, I'm sure!" was poor Sister Sigred's rather hopeless answer.

I have found out at last what the world is. I am so glad! I asked Father Mortimer, and I told him how puzzled I was about it.

"My daughter," said he, "thou didst renounce three things at thy baptism--the world, the flesh, and the Devil. The works of the flesh thou wilt find enumerated in Saint Paul's Epistle to the Galatians [Galatians 5, verses 19-21]: and they are _not_ 'love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.'

These are the fruits of the Spirit. What the Devil is, thou knowest.

Let us then see what is the world. It lies, saith Saint John, in three things: the l.u.s.t of the flesh, the l.u.s.t of the eyes, and the pride of life. What are these? The l.u.s.t of the flesh is not love, for that is a fruit of the Spirit. It is self-love: worshipping thyself, comforting thyself, advantaging thyself, and regarding all others as either toys or slaves for that great idol, thyself. The l.u.s.t of the eye is not innocent enjoyment of the gifts of G.o.d: doth a father give gifts to his child in order that she may _not_ use and delight in them? It lies in valuing His gifts above His will; taking the gift and forgetting the Giver; robbing the altar of G.o.d in order to deck thine idol, and that idol thyself. Covetousness, love of gain, pursuit of profit to thyself--these are idolatry, and the l.u.s.t of the eye. The pride of life--what is this? Once more, decking thyself with the property of G.o.d. Show and grandeur, pomp and vanity, revelling and folly--all to show thee, to aggrandise thee, to delight thee. The danger of abiding in the world is lest the world get into thee, and abide in thee. Beware of the thought that there is no such danger in the cloister. The world may be in thee, howsoever thou art out of the world. A queen may wear her velvet robes with a single eye to the glory of G.o.d, and a nun may wear her habit with a single eye to the glory of self. Fill thine heart with Christ, and there will be no room left for the world. Fill thine heart with the world, and no room will be left for Christ. They cannot abide together; they are contrary the one to the other. Thou canst not saunter along the path of life, arm-in-arm with the world, in pleasant intercourse. Her face is not toward the City of G.o.d: if thine be, ye must go contrary ways. 'How can two walk together, except they be agreed' what direction to pursue? And remember, thou art one, and the world is many. She is strong enough to pull thee round; thou art not at all likely to change her course. And the peril of such intercourse is that the pulling round is so gradually effected that thou wilt never see it."

"But how am I to help it, Father?"

"By keeping thine eye fixed on G.o.d. Set the Lord alway before thee. So long as He is at thy right hand, thou shalt not be moved."

Father Mortimer was silent for a moment; and when he spoke again, it was rather to himself, or to G.o.d, than to me.

"Alas for the Church of G.o.d!" he said. "The time was when her baptismal robes were white and spotless; when she came out, and was separate, and touched not the unclean thing. Hath G.o.d repealed His command thus to do? In no wise. Hath the world become holy, harmless, undefiled--no longer selfish, frivolous, carnal, earth-bound? Nay, for it waxeth worse and worse as the end draws nearer. Woe is me! has the Church stepped down from her high position as the elect and select company of the sons of G.o.d, because these daughters of men are so fair and bewitching? Is she slipping back, sliding down, dipping low her once high standard of holiness to the Lord, bringing down her aim to the level of her practice, because it suits not with her easy selfishness to gird up her loins and elevate her practice to what her standard was and ought to be? And she gilds her unfaithfulness, forsooth, with the name of divine charity! saying, Peace, peace! when there is no peace. 'What peace, so long as the wh.o.r.edoms of thy mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many?' They cry, 'Speak unto us smooth things'--and the Lord hath put none such in our lips. The word that He giveth us, that must we speak. And it is, 'Come out of her, My people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.' Ye cannot remain and not partake the sins; and if ye partake the sins, then shall ye receive the plagues. 'What G.o.d hath joined together, let not man put asunder.'" [Note 7.]

Thank G.o.d for this light upon my path! for coming from His Word, it must be light from Heaven. O my Lord, Thou art Love incarnate, and Thou hast bidden us to love each other. Thou hast set us in families, and chosen our relatives, our neighbours, our surroundings. From Thine hand we take them all, and use them, and love them, in Thee, for Thee, to Thee.

"We are taught of G.o.d to love each other." We only love too much when we love ourselves, or when we love others above Thee. And "the command we have of Thee is that he who loveth Thee, love his brother also"--the last word we hear from Thee is a promise that Thou wilt come again, and take us--together, all--not to separate stars, but to be with Thee for ever. Amen, Lord Jesu Christ, so let it be!

It is several weeks since I have seen Margaret, otherwise than in community. But to-night I heard the timid little rap on my door, and the equally timid "Annora?" which came after. When Margaret says that word, in that tone, she wants a chat with me, and she means to inquire deprecatingly if she may have it.

"Come in, darling," I said.

Since Father Mortimer gave me leave to love any one, any how, so long as I put G.o.d first, I thought I might say "darling" to Margaret. She smiled,--I fancied she looked a little surprised--and coming forward, she knelt down at my feet, in her favourite att.i.tude, and laid her clasped hands in my lap.

"Is there some trouble, Margaret?"

"No, dear Annora. Only little worries which make one feel tired out: nothing to be properly called trouble. I am working under Mother Ada this week, and--well, you know what she is. I do not wish to speak evil of any one: only--sometimes, one feels tired. So I thought it would help me to have a little talk with my sister Annora. Art thou weary too?"

"I think I am rested, dear," said I. "Father Mortimer has given me a word of counsel from Holy Writ, and it hath done me good."

"He hath given me many an one," she saith, with a smile that seemed half pleasure and half pain. "And I am trying to live by the light of the last I had--I know not if the words were Holy Writ or no, but I think the substance was--'If Christ possess thee, then shalt thou inherit all things.'"

She was silent for a moment, with a look of far-away thought: and I was thinking that a hundred little worries might be as wearying and wearing as one greater trouble. Suddenly Margaret looked up with a laugh for which her eyes apologised.

"I could not help thinking," she said, "that I hope 'all things' have a limit. To inherit Mother Ada's temper would scarcely be a boon!"

"All good things," said I.

"Yes, all good things," she answered. "That must mean, all things that our Lord sees good for us--which may not be those that we see good for ourselves. But one thing we know--that if we be His, that must be, first of all, Himself--He with us here, we with Him hereafter. And next to that comes the promise that they which are Christ's, with whom we have to part here, will be brought home with us when He cometh. There is no restriction on the companying of the Father's children, when they are gathered together in the Father's House."

I knew what she saw. And I saw the dear grey eyes of my child Joan; but behind them, other eyes that mine have not beheld for fifty years, and that I shall see next--and then for ever--in the light of the Golden City. Softly I said--[Note 8.]

"'_Hic breve vivitur, hic breve plangitur, hic breve fletur; Non breve vivitur, non breve plangitur, retribuetur_.'"

Margaret's reply sounded like the other half of an antiphon. [Note 9.]

"'_Plaude, cinis meus! est tua pars Deus; ejus es, et sis_.'"

Note 1. The early notices of blanket in the Wardrobe Accounts disprove the tradition that blankets were invented by Edward Blanket, buried in Saint Stephen's Church, Bristol, the church not having been built until 1470.

Note 2. Father Mortimer is a fict.i.tious person, this Sir John having in reality died unmarried.

Note 3. Laundresses were very much looked down on in the Middle Ages, and were but too often women of bad character.

Note 4. Cambric handkerchiefs. It was then thought very mean to be in trade.

Note 5. Married priests existed in England as late as any where, if not later than in other countries. Walter, Rector of Adlingfleet, married Alice niece of Savarie Abbot of York, about the reign of Richard the First. (Register of John of Gaunt, volume 2, folio 148); "Emma, widow of Henry, the priest of Forlond," was living in 1284 (Close Roll, 12 Edward the First); and "Denise, daughter of John de Colchester, the chaplain," is mentioned in 1322 (Ibidem, 16 Edward the Second).

Note 6. Coal smoke was then considered extremely unhealthy, while wood smoke was thought to be a prophylactic against consumption.

Note 7. I would fain add here a word of warning against one of Satan's wiliest devices, one of the saddest delusions of our time, for a mult.i.tude of souls are led astray by it, and in some cases it deceives the very elect. I mean the popular blind terror of "controversy," so rife in the present day. Let us beware that we suffer not indolence and cowardice to shelter themselves under the insulted name of charity. We are bidden to "strive together for the truth of the Gospel"--"earnestly to contend for the faith" (in both places the Greek word means to _wrestle_); words which presuppose an antagonist and a controversy.

Satan hates controversy; it is the spear of Ithuriel to him. We are often told that controversy is contrary to the Gospel precepts of love to enemies--that it hinders more important work--that it injures spirituality. What says the Apostle to whom to live was Christ--on whom came daily the care of all the Churches--who tells us that "the greatest of these is charity"? "Though we, or an angel from Heaven, preach any other Gospel--let him be accursed!" "To whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour: that the truth of the Gospel might continue with you." Ten minutes of friendly contact with the world will do more to injure spirituality than ten years of controversy conducted in a Christian spirit--not fighting for victory but for truth, not for ourselves but for Christ. This miserable blunder will be seen in its true colours by those who have to eat its bitter fruit.

Note 8.

"Brief life is here our portion; Brief sorrow, short-lived care: The life that hath no ending, The tearless life, is there."