The House of Walderne Part 23

Then--the banquet was spread in the castle hall.

Chapter 13: How Martin Gained His Desire.

While one of the two friends was thus hewing his way to knighthood by deeds of "dering do," the other was no less steadily persevering in the path which led to the object of his desire. The less ambitious object, as the world would say.

He was ever indefatigable in his work of love amidst the poor and sick, and gained the approbation of his superiors most thoroughly, although in the stern coldness which they thought an essential part of true discipline, they were scant of their encomiums. Men ought to work, they said, simply from a sense of duty to G.o.d, and earthly praise was the "dead fly which makes the apothecary's ointment to stink." So they allowed their younger brethren to toil on without any such mundane reward, only they cheered them by their brotherly love, shown in a hundred different ways.

One long-remembered day in the summer of the year 1259, Martin strolled down the river's banks, to indulge in meditation and prayer. But the banks were too crowded for him that day. He marked the boats as they came up from Abingdon, drawn by horses, laden with commodities; or shot down the swift stream without such advent.i.tious aid. Pleasure wherries darted about impelled by the young scholars of Oxford, as in these modern days. Fishermen plied their trade or sport. The river was the great highway; no, there was no solitude there.

So into the forest which lay between Oxford and Abingdon, now only surviving in Bagley Wood, plunged our novice. As the poet says:

Into the forest, darker, deeper, grayer, His lips moving as if in prayer, Walked the monk Martin, all alone: Around him the tops of the forest trees Waving, made the sign of the Cross And muttered their benedicites.

The woods were G.o.d's first temples; and even now where does one feel so alone with one's Maker? How sweet the solemn silence! where the freed spirit, freed from external influences, can hold communion with its heavenly Father. So felt Martin. The very birds seemed to him to be singing carols; and the insects to join, with their hum, the universal hymn of praise.

Oh how the serpent lurks in Eden--beneath earthly beauty lies the mystery of pain and suffering.

A wail struck on Martin's ears--the voice of a little child, and soon he brushed aside the branches in the direction of the cry, until he struck upon a faintly trodden path, which led to the cottage of one of the foresters, or as we should say "keepers."

At the gate of the little enclosure, which surrounded the patch of cultivated ground attached to the house, a young child stood weeping. When she saw Martin her eyes lighted up with joy.

"Oh, G.o.d has sent thee, good brother. Come and help my poor mother.

She is so ill," and she tripped back towards the house; "and father can't help her, nor brother either. Father lies cold and still, and brother frightens me."

What did it mean?

Martin saw it at once--the plague! That terrible oriental disease, probably a malignant form of typhus, bred of foul drainage, and cultivated as if in some satanic hot bed, until it had reached the perfection of its deadly growth, by its transmission from bodily frame to frame. It was terribly infectious, but what then? It had to be faced, and if one died of it, one died doing G.o.d's work--thought Martin.

So as Hubert faced his Welshmen, did Martin face his foe--"typhus"

or plague, call it which we please.

Which required the greater courage, my younger readers? But there was no more faltering in Martin's step than in Hubert's, as he went to that pallet in an inner room, where a human being tossed in all the heat of fever, and the incessant cry, "I thirst," pierced the heart.

"So did HE thirst on the Cross," thought Martin, "and He thirsts again in the suffering members of His mystical body--for in all their affliction He is afflicted."

There was no water close by in the chamber, but Martin had noticed a clear spring outside, and taking a cup he went to the fount and filled it. He administered it sparingly to the parched lips, fearing its effect in larger quant.i.ties, but oh! the eagerness with which the sufferer received it--those blanched lips, that dry parched palate.

"Canst thou hear me, art thou conscious?"

"An angel of G.o.d?"

"No, a sinner like thyself."

"Go, thou wilt catch the plague."

"I am in G.o.d's hands. HE has sent me to thee. Tell me sister--hast thou thrown thyself upon His mercy, and united thy sufferings with those of the Slain, the Crucified, who thirsted for thee?"

And Martin spoke of the life of love, and the death of shame, as an angel might have done, his features lighted up with love and faith.

And the living word was blessed by the Giver of Life.

Then he felt the poor child pulling him gently to another room, whence faint moans were now heard. There lay the brother, a fine lad of some fourteen summers, in the death agony, the face black already; and on another pallet the dead body of the forester, the father of the family.

Martin could not leave them. The night came on. He kindled a fire, both for warmth and to purify the air. He found some cakes and very soon roasted a morsel for the poor girl, the only one yet untouched, partaking of it sparingly himself. He went from sufferer to sufferer; moistening the lips, a.s.suaging the agony of the body, and striving to save the soul.

The poor boy pa.s.sed into unconsciousness and died while Martin prayed by his side. The widow lingered till the morning light, when she, too, pa.s.sed away into peace, her last hours soothed by the message of the Gospel.

Then Martin took the child and led her towards the city, meditating sadly on the strange mystery of death and pain. The woods were as beautiful as before, but not in the eyes of one whose mind was full of the remembrance of the ravages of the fell destroyer.

"Where are you taking me?"

"To the good sisters of Saint Clare, who will take care of thee for Christ's sake."

So he strove to wipe away the tears from the orphan's eyes.

He reached Oxford, gave up his charge to the charitable sisterhood, then reported himself to his academical and ecclesiastical superiors, who were pleased to express their approval of all that he had done. But as a measure of precaution they bade him change and destroy his infected raiment, to take a certain electuary supposed to render a person less disposed to infection, and to retire early to his couch.

All this he did; but after his first sleep he woke up with an aching head and intolerable sense of heat--feverish heat. He understood it all too well, and lost no time in commending himself to his heavenly Father, for he felt that he might soon lose consciousness and be unable to do so.

A purer spirit never commended itself to its Maker and Redeemer.

But it was not in this he put his trust. It was in Him of whom Saint Francis sang so sweetly:

To Him my heart He drew While hanging on the tree, From whence He said to me I am the Shepherd true; Love sets my heart on fire-- Love of the Crucified.

And ere his delirium set in, Martin made a full resignation of his will to G.o.d. He had hoped to do much for love of his Lord, to carry the message of the Gospel into the Andredsweald, where the kindred of his mother yet lived, and the thought that he should never see their forest glades again was painful. And the blankness of unconsciousness, the fearful nature of the black death, was in itself repulsive; but it had all been ordered and settled by Infinite Love before ever he was born, probably before the worlds were framed, and Martin said with all his heart the words breathed by the Incarnate G.o.d, when groaning beneath the olive tree in mysterious agony:

"Not my will, but thine, be done."

And then he lapsed into delirium.

The next sensation of which he was conscious, and which he afterwards remembered, for we have not done with our Martin yet, was one of a singular character. A glorious light, but intensely painful, seemed before his eyes. It burnt, it dazzled, it confounded him; yet he admired and adored it, for it seemed to him the glory of G.o.d thus fashioning itself before him. And on that brilliant orb, glowing like a sun, was a black spot which seemed to Martin to be himself, a blot on G.o.d's glory, and he cried, "Oh, let me perish, if but Thy glory be unstained," when a voice seemed to reply, "My glory shall be shown in thy redemption, not in thy destruction."

Probably this took place at the crisis of the disease, and the physical and spiritual sensations were in union throughout the illness. For now Martin was delirious with joy--sweet strains of music were ever about him. The angels gathered in his cell and sang carols, songs of love to the Crucified. One stormy night, when gentle but heavy rain descended, patter, patter, on the roof above his head, he thought Gabriel and all the angelic choir were there, singing the Gloria in Excelsis, poising themselves on wings without the window, and the strain:

Pax in terra hominibus bonoe voluntatis,

Was so ineffably sweet that the tears rolled down his cheeks in streams.

This was the end of the imaginary music. The next morning he woke up conscious--himself again. His first return to consciousness was an impression of a voice:

"Dearest brother, thou art better, art thou not?"

"I am quite free from pain, only a hungered."

"What food dost thou desire to enter thy lips first?"

"The Bread of Life."