The Well in the Desert Part 4

"Listen," said he, "and I will tell you of One whom all your life you have injured and neglected--G.o.d."

Philippa's protestations died on her lips. She had not expected to hear such words as these.

"Nay, heed not my words," he pursued gently. "Your own lips shall bring you in guilty. Have you loved G.o.d with all your mind, and heart, and soul, and strength? Hath He been in all your thoughts?"

Philippa felt instinctively that the monk spoke truly. She had not loved G.o.d, she had not even wished to love Him. Her conscience cried to her, "Unclean!" yet she was too proud to acknowledge it. She felt angry, not with herself, but with him. She thought he "rubbed the sore, when he should bring the plaster." Comfort she had asked, and condemnation he was giving her instead.

"Father!" she said, in mingled sadness and vexation, "you deal me hard measure."

"My daughter," answered the monk very gently, "the pitcher must be voided ere it can be filled. If you go to the Well with your vessel full of the water of earth, there will be no room there for the Living Water."

"Is it only for saints, then?" she asked in a disappointed tone.

"It is only for sinners," answered he: "and according to your own belief, you are not a sinner. The Living Water is not wasted on pitchers that have been filled already at other cisterns, 'I will give unto him that is athirst'--but to him only--'of the Fountain of the Water of Life, freely.'"

"But tell me, in plain words, what is that Water of Life?"

"The Holy Spirit of G.o.d."

Philippa's next question was not so wide of the mark as it seemed.

"Are you a true Dominican?"

"I am one of the Order of Predicant Friars."

"From what house?"

"From Ashridge."

"Who sent you forth to preach?"

"G.o.d."

"Ah! yes, but I mean, what bishop or abbot?"

"Is the seal of the servant worth more than that of the Master?"

"I would know, Father," urged Philippa.

The monk smiled. "Archbishop Bradwardine," he said.

"Then Ashridge is a Dominican house? I know not that vicinage."

"Men give us another name," responded the monk slowly, "which I see you would know. Be it so. They call us--Boni-Homines."

"But I thought," said Philippa, looking bewilderedly into his face, "I thought those were very evil men. And Archbishop Bradwardine was a very holy man--almost a saint."

A faint ironical smile flitted for a moment over the monk's grave lips.

The gravity was again unbroken the next instant.

"A very holy man," he repeated. "He walked with G.o.d; and he is not, for G.o.d took him. Ay, took him away from the evil to come, where he should vex his righteous soul no more by unlawful deeds--where the alloyed gold of worldly greatness, which men would needs braid over the pure ermine of his life, should soil and crush it no more."

He spoke rather to himself than to Philippa: and his eyes had a far-away look in them, as he lifted his head and gazed from the window over the moorland.

"Then what are the Boni-Homines?" inquired Lady Sergeaux.

"A few sinners," answered the monk, "whose hearts G.o.d hath touched, that they have sought and found that Well of the Living Water."

"But, Father, explain it to me!" she cried anxiously, perhaps even a little querulously. "Put it in plain words, that I can understand it.

What is it to drink this Living Water?"

"To come to Christ, my daughter," replies the monk.

"But I cannot understand you," she objected, in the same tone. "How can I come? What mean you by coming? He is not here in this chamber, that I can rise and go to Him. Can you not use words more intelligible to me?"

"In the first place, my daughter," softly replied the monk, "you are under a great mistake. Christ is here in this chamber, and hath heard every word that we have said. And in the second place, I cannot use words that shall be plainer to you. How can the dead understand the living? How shall a man born blind be brought to know the difference of colour between green and blue. Yet the hardship lieth not in the inaptness of the teacher, but in the inability of the taught."

"But I am not blind, nor dead!" cried Philippa.

"Both," answered the monk. "So, by nature, be we all."

Philippa made no reply; she was too vexed to make any. The monk laid his hand gently upon her head.

"Take the best wish that I can make for you:--G.o.d show you how blind you are! G.o.d put life within you, that you may awake, and arise from the dead, and see the light of Christ! May He grant you that thirst which shall be satisfied with nothing short of the Living Water--which shall lead you to disregard all the roughnesses of the way, and the storms of the journey, so that you may win Christ, and be found in Him! G.o.d strip you of your own goodness!--for I fear you are over-well satisfied therewith. And no goodness shall ever have admittance into Heaven save the goodness which is of G.o.d."

"But surely," exclaimed Philippa, looking up in surprise, "there is grace of congruity?"

"Grace of congruity! grace of condignity!" [see Note] cried the monk fervently. "Grace of sin and gracelessness! It is not all worth so much as one of these rushes upon your floor. If you carry grace of congruity to the gates of Heaven, I warn you it shall never bear you one step beyond. Lay down those miserable rush-staffs, wherein is no pith; and take G.o.d's golden staff held out to you, which is the full and perfected obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ. That staff shall not fail you. All the angels at the gate of Paradise know it; and the doors shall fly wide open to whoso smiteth on them with that staff of G.o.d.

Lord, open her eyes, that she may see!"

The prayer was answered, but not then.

"What shall I call you?" asked Philippa, when the monk rose to depart.

"Men call me Guy of Ashridge," he said.

"I hope to see you again, Father," responded Philippa.

"So do I, my daughter," answered the monk, "in that other land whereinto nothing shall enter that defileth. Nothing but Christ and Christ's--the Head and the body, the Master and the meynie [household servant]. May the Master make you one of the meynie! Farewell."

And in five minutes more, Guy of Ashridge was gone.

Note. "Condignity implies merit, and of course claims reward on the score of justice. Congruity pretends only to a sort of imperfect qualification for the gifts and reception of G.o.d's grace."--_Manet's Church History_, iv. 81.

CHAPTER FOUR.