The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary Part 14

It seemed that many were like that at the Court. They were near all against him at first; but when they knew that he was wounded to death; and had heard what the King had said of him; and seen my lord cardinal's rosy face running with tears of pity and anger as he tore the lad out of their hands; and gossipped a little with the porter of the monastery; and listened to the holy ankret roaring out in his cell against Hierusalem that slew the prophets;--and, most of all, remembered, or told one another of Master Richard's face as he came out from the privy staircase before he was struck down--like the Melitenses--_convertentes se dicebant eum esse deum_. ["Changing their minds, they said he was a G.o.d" (Acts xxviii. 6.)]

I talked with many that morning (for I could do nothing for my lad), who came in to see one who knew him so well, and had been his friend in the country.

And after dinner my lord cardinal came in to see me, and I was brought back to the parlour.

His ruddy face was all blotched and lined with sorrow or age, and for a while he could say nothing. He went up and down with his sanguine robes flying behind him, and stayed to look out of the window at the boats that went by until I thought that he had forgotten me. And at the last he spoke.

"I do not know what to say to you, Sir John, or what to say to G.o.d Almighty on this matter. It appears to me that we have all been blind and deaf adders, and with the venom of adders, too, beneath our tongues--except one or two rude fellows, and my lord King who knew him for a prophet, and the ankret, who tells us we shall all be d.a.m.ned for what we have done, and yourself. There be so many of these wild a.s.ses that bray and kick, that when he came we did not distinguish him to be the colt on which our Lord came to town--and now, as it was then, _Dominus eum necessarium habet_." ["The Lord hath need of him" (Luke xix. 34.)]

"But I know what I wish to be said to him, though I dare not say it myself, or set eyes on him--and that is that I pray him to forgive us, and to speak our names before the Lord G.o.d when he comes before His Majesty."

"I will tell him that, my lord," I said softly, for I did not doubt that Master Richard would speak before he died.

After a while longer my lord cardinal asked how he did, and I told him that he had lain very quiet all day without speaking or moving, and then, for I knew what my lord wanted, I bade him in Jesu's name to come in and look on him. For a while he would not, and then he came, and knelt down beside the King.

Master Richard was lying now upon his back, with his hands hidden and clasped upon his breast, and his lips were moving a little without sound. I think that he had never had so long and so heavenly a colloquy as he was enjoying then. I do not know whether it were the cardinal's presence that disturbed him, or whether in that secret place where his soul was retired he heard what had been said by us, but he spoke aloud for the first time that day, and this is what he said:--

"_Et dimitte n.o.bis debita nostra; sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris._" ["And forgive us our trespa.s.ses, as we forgive them that trespa.s.s against us."]

I saw my lord's face go down upon his hands, and the King's face rise and look at him. And presently my lord went out.

I cannot tell you, my children, how that day pa.s.sed, for it was like no day that I have ever spent. It appeared to me that there was no time, but that all stood still. Without, the palace was as still as death on the one side--for the King had ordered it so--and on the other there was the noise from the river, little and clear and distinct, of the water washing in the sedges and against the stones, and the cries of the boatmen on the further sh.o.r.e, and the rattle of their oars as they took men across.

Once, as I stood by the window saying my office, a boat went by with folk talking in it, and I heard enough of what they said to know that they were speaking of Master Richard, and I heard one telling the tale to another, and saw him point to the windows of the palace. But when they saw me look out they gave over talking.

A little after the evening bell Master Blytchett took the King out to his supper, and I was left alone with Master Richard, but I knew that there were servants in the pa.s.sage whom I might call if I needed them.

So I sat down by the pillow and looked at him a great while.

I will tell you, my children, something of what I thought at this time, for it is at such times when the eyes are washed clean by tears that the soul looks out upon truth and sees it as it is. [I have omitted a great number of Sir John's reflections. Many of them are too trite even for this work, and others are so much confused that it is useless to transcribe them. Sir John seems to have been dearly fond of sermonizing.

Even these that I have retained and set within brackets can be omitted in reading by those who prefer to supply their own comment.]....

{I thought of the _ironia_ that marks our Lord's dealings. Master Richard had come to bring tidings of another's pa.s.sion, and he found his own in the bringing of it. It was as when children play at the hanging of a murderer or a thief, and one is set to play the part of prisoner and another to hang him, and then at the end when all is prepared they turn upon the hangman and bid him prepare himself for whipping and death instead of the other, or maybe both are to be hanged. But our Lord is not cruel, like such children, but kind, and I think that He acts so to shew us that life is nothing but a play and a pretence, and that His will must be done, however much we rebel at it. He teaches us, too, that the blows we receive and even death itself are only seeming, though they hurt us at the time, but that we must play in a gallant and merry spirit, and be tender, too, and forgive one another easily, and that He will set all right and allot to each his reward at the end of the playing. And, since it is but a play, we are none of us kings or cardinals or poor men in reality; we are all of us mere children of our Father, and upon one is set a crown for a jest, and another is robed in sanguine, and another in a brown kirtle or a white; and at the end the trinkets are all put back again in the press, ready for another day and other children, and we all go to bed as G.o.d made us.

But you must not think, my children, that our life is a little thing because of this; I only mean that one thing is as little and as great as another, and that maids maying in the country are as much about G.o.d's business as kings and cardinals who strive in palaces, and who give to this man a collar of Saint Spirit, and to that man a collar of hemp. It was for this reason, maybe, that our Lord did all things when He was upon earth. He rode upon His colt as a King; He reigned upon the rood; He sat at meat with sinners; He wrought tables and chairs at the carpenter's; He fashioned sparrows, as some relate, out of clay, and made them fly; and He said that not a sparrow falls without His love and intention; and He did all and said all in the same spirit and mind, and at the end He smiled and put on His crown again, and sat down for ever _ad dexteram Dei_, that He might let us do the same, and help us by His grace, especially in the sacraments, to be merry and confident. [This is a very puzzling philosophy. It is surely either very profound or very shallow. But it certainly is not cynical. Sir John is incapable of such a feeble emotion as that.]....

This then, too, I thought at that time.

It is marvellous how our Lord sets His seal upon all that we do, if we will but attend to His working, and not think too highly upon what we do ourselves. He had caused Master Richard to wear His five wounds until he loved them, and to set his meat, too, in their order, and then He had bidden His servant tell him that he did not need the piece of linen, for that he should bear the wounds upon his body. And this He fulfilled; for, as Master Blytchett told me, there were neither more nor less than five wounds upon the young man's body, which he had received from the crowd that set on him, besides the bruises and the stripes. He had caused Master Richard, too, to be haled from judge to judge, as Himself was haled; to be deemed Master by some, and named fool by others; to be borne in a boat by one who loved him; to be arrayed in a white robe to be judged without justice; to be dumb _sicut ovis ad occisionem ... et quasi agnus coram tondente se_ ["as a sheep to the slaughter ... as a lamb before his shearer" (Is. liii. 7.)], with many other points and marks, besides that which fell afterwards, when a rich man, like him of Arimathy, cared for his burying, and strewed herbs and bay leaves and myrtle upon his body.

There was the matter, too, of the bees that I had seen. [Sir John lays great stress upon the bees; I cannot understand why. He says that they betokened great wealth and happiness.]....

And again there was the matter of the seven days that Master Richard fulfilled from the time of his setting out from his house, to the time that he entered into his heavenly mansion. Seven days are the time of perfection; it was in seven days that G.o.d Almighty made the world and all that is in it; there were seven years of famine in Egypt in which Joseph gathered store, and seven years of plenty. [I cannot bring myself to follow Sir John through the whole of the Old and New Testaments.]....

And it was in seven days that Master Richard Raynal completed his course, from the sowing of the wheat and wine on Corpus Xti, to his joyful harvest in heaven....}

I thought, too, at this time of many other things, such as you may suppose--of Master Richard's little cell in the country which would never see him again (for I did not know at this time what the King intended of his grace), and of the beasts that awaited him so lamentably, and then of this great room hung all over with royalty whither it had pleased G.o.d that his darling should come to die. I looked, too, very often upon Master Richard as he lay before me, upon his clean pallour, paler than I had ever seen it, and his slender fingers roughened by the spade, and his strong arm, and his smiling lips, and his closed eyes that looked within upon what I was not worthy to see, and I wondered often what it was that he was saying to our Lord and the blessed, and what they were saying to him, and I prayed that my name might be mentioned amongst them, lest I should be a castaway after all that I had heard and seen.

When it was dark (for I dared not kindle the candles) the King came in again, and as he came in Master Richard spoke my name, and moved his hand towards me on the coverlet.

How Master Richard went to G.o.d

_Transivimus per ignem et aquam: et eduxisti nos in refrigerium._

We have pa.s.sed through fire and water: and Thou hast brought us out into a refreshment.--_Ps. lxv. 12._

XV

The King presently kissed Master Richard's hand and asked his pardon and his prayers, saying that he had known nothing of what went forward during those two days, until the crying of Jesus' name by Master Richard before the cardinal, but blaming his own craven heart, as he called it.

And when Master Richard had spoken awhile, he asked the King to go out, for that he had much to say to me in secret.

So the King went out very softly, and set other guards at the doors, and we two sat there a long while.

I was astonished at Master Richard's strength and courage, for he had spoken aloud to the King, but when the King was gone out, he spoke in a lower voice, holding my hand. It was very dark, for he would have no lights, and I could see no more of him but a little of his hair, and the pallour of his face beneath it, until the morn came and the end came.

He told me first of what he had done, and what had been done to him since a week ago, when we had kissed one another at the lych-gate--all as I have told it to you. He talked quietly, as I have said, but he laughed a little now and again, and once or twice his voice trembled with tears as he related our Lord's loving-kindness to him. (I have never known any man who loved Jesu Christ more than this man loved Him.)

I asked him a few questions, and he answered them, but the effect of all that he said was what I have written down here, and sometimes I have his very words as he spoke them.

At last he came to the end of what he had to say, and began to tell me of the _Night of the Soul_, and here he talked in a very low voice so that I could scarcely hear what he said, and of what he said I did not understand one half, [I am thankful that Sir John recognized his own limitations.] for it was full of mysteries such as other contemplative souls alone would recognise--for all contemplatives, as you know, relate the same things to one another which they have seen and heard, and the words that each uses the other understands, but other men do not; for they speak of things that they have seen indeed, but for which there are no proper human words, so that they have to do the best that they can.

He told me that the state that I have described to you continued until he came before my lord cardinal, so that although he saw men's faces and heard their words they were no more to him than shadows and whisperings; for since (as it appeared to him) he had lost G.o.d by his own fault there was no longer anything by which he might communicate with man.

Yet all this while there was the conflict of which I have spoken. There was that in him, which we name the Will, which continued tense and strong, striving against despair. Neither his mind nor his heart could help him in that _Night_; his mind informed him that he had sinned deadly by presumption, his heart found nowhere G.o.d to love; and all that, though he told himself that G.o.d was loveable, and adorable, and that he could not fall into h.e.l.l save by his own purpose and intention.

Yet, in spite of all, and when all had failed him, his will strove against despair (which is the antichrist of humility [A curious phrase, and, I think, rather a good one. I suspect it was originally Master Richard's.]), though he did not recognise until afterwards that he was striving, for he thought himself lost, as I have said.