Chapter Six.
The New Confessor.
“Had the knight looked up to the page’s face,
No smile the word had won;
Had the knight looked up to the page’s face,
I ween he had never gone:
Had the knight looked back to the page’s geste,
I ween he had turned anon,—
For dread was the woe in the face so young,
And wild was the silent geste that flung
Casque, sword, to earth as the boy down-sprung,
And stood—alone, alone!”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Nobody enjoyed the spring of the year 1236. Rain poured down, day after day, as if it were the prelude to a second Deluge. The Thames overflowed its banks to such an extent that the lawyers had to return home in boats, floated by the tide into Westminster Hall. There was no progress, except by boat or horse, through the streets of the royal borough.
Perhaps the physical atmosphere slightly affected the moral and political, for men’s minds were much unsettled, and their tempers very captious. The King, with his usual fickleness and love of novelty, had thrown himself completely into the arms of the horde of poor relations whom the new Queen brought over with her, particularly of her uncle, Guglielmo of Savoy, the Bishop of Valentia, whom he constituted his prime minister. By his advice new laws were promulgated which extremely angered the English nobles, who complained that they were held of no account in the royal councils. The storms were especially violent in the North, and there people took to seeing prophetic visions of dreadful import. Beside all this, France was in a very disturbed state, which boded ill to the English provinces across the sea. The Counts of Champagne, Bretagne, and La Marche, used strong language concerning the disgraceful fact that “France, the kingdom of kingdoms, was governed by a woman,” Queen Blanche of Castilla being Regent during the minority of her son, Saint Louis. It is a singular fact that while the name of Blanche has descended to posterity as that of a woman of remarkable wisdom, discretion, and propriety of life, the popular estimate of her during her regency was almost exactly the reverse.
Meanwhile, the royal marriage festivities went on uproariously at Canterbury. There was not a peacock-pie the less on account either of the black looks of the English nobles, or of the very shallow condition of the royal treasury. To King Henry, who had no intention of paying any bills that he could help, what did it signify how much things cost, or whether the sum total were twenty pence or twenty thousand pounds?
The feasts having at last come to an end, King Henry left Canterbury for Merton Abbey, and Earl Hubert accompanied him. What became of the Queen is not stated: nor are we told whether His Majesty thus went “into retreat” to seek absolution for his past transgressions, or from the lamentable necessity of paying his debts.
On the 20th of January, the royal penitent emerged from his retreat, to be crowned with his bride at Westminster. Earl Hubert of course was present; and the Countess thought proper to feel well enough to join him for the occasion. The ceremony was a most splendid one,—very different from that first hurried coronation of the young Henry on his father’s death, when, all the regalia having been lost in fording the Wash, he was crowned with a gold collar belonging to his mother. The Archbishop of Canterbury was the officiating priest. The citizens of London, hereditary Butlers of England, presented three hundred and sixty cups of gold and silver, at which the eyes of the royal and acquisitive pair doubtless glistened, and which, in all probability, were melted down in a month to pay for the coronation banquet. King Henry paid a bill just often enough to prevent his credit from falling into a hopelessly disreputable condition. The Earl of Chester—one of Earl Hubert’s two great enemies—bore Curtana, “the sword of Saint Edward,” says the monk of Saint Albans, “to show that he is Earl of the Palace, and has by right the power of restraining the King if he should commit an error.” Either Earl Ranulph de Blundeville was very neglectful of his office, or else he must have found it anything but a sinecure. The Constable of Chester attended the Earl; his office was to restrain not the King, but the people, by keeping them off with his wand when they pressed too close. The Earl of Pembroke, husband of Princess Marjory of Scotland, carried a wand before the King, cleared the way, superintended the banquet, and arranged the guests. The basin was presented by a handsome young foreigner, Simon de Montfort, youngest son of the Count de Montfort, and cousin of the Earl of Chester, to whose good offices in the first instance he probably owed his English preferment. He had not yet become the most powerful man in the kingdom, the darling of the English people, the husband of the King’s sister, the man whom, on his own testimony,—much as he feared a thunderstorm,—Henry feared “more than all the thunder and lightning in the world!” The Earl of Arundel should have been the cup-bearer; but being too young to discharge the office, his kinsman the Earl of Surrey officiated for him. The citizens of Winchester were privileged to cook the banquet; and the Abbot of Westminster kept every thing straight by sprinkling holy water.
Once more, the banquet over, the King returned into retreat at Merton to get rid of his additional shortcomings. Never was man so pious as this Monarch,—if piety consisted of tithing mint, anise, and cummin, and of neglecting the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.
It was a sharp frosty morning in February. Margaret, Doucebelle, and Belasez were at work in the bower, while Father Nicholas was hearing Marie read Latin in the ante-chamber. The other chaplains were also present,—Father Warner, who, with Nicholas, belonged to the Earl; and Father Bruno, the chaplain of the Countess. Also present was Master Aristoteles, the reverend physician of the household. Fortunately for herself, Marie was by no means shy, and she feared the face of no human creature unless it were Father Warner, who, Margaret used to say, had eyes in the back of his head, and could hear what the cows were thinking about in the meadow. He was an extremely strict disciplinarian when on duty, but he never interfered with the proceedings of a brother tutor.
Father Bruno was a new inmate of the household. He had come from Lincoln, with a recommendation from the recently-appointed Bishop, but had been there too short a time to show his character, since he was a silent man, who appeared to see everything and to say nothing.
“Very well, my daughter. Thou hast been a good, attentive maiden this morning,” said Father Nicholas, when the reading was finished.
“Then, Father, will you let me off my sums?” was Marie’s quick response.
Marie hated arithmetic, which was Doucebelle’s favourite study.
“Nay, my child,” said Father Nicholas, in an amused tone; “that is not my business. Thou must ask Father Warner.”
“Please, Father Warner, will you let me off my sums?” pleaded Marie, but in a more humble style.
“Certainly not, daughter. Fetch them at once.”
Marie left the room with a grieved face.
“No news abroad, I suppose, my brethren?” suggested Master Aristoteles, in his brisk, simple, innocent manner.
“Nay, none but what we all knew before,” said Father Nicholas.
“Methinks the world wags but slowly,” said Master Aristoteles.
“Much too fast,” was the oracular reply of Father Warner.
“The pace of the world depends mainly on our own wishes, I take it,” said Father Nicholas. “He who would fain walk thinks the world is at a gallop; while he who desires to gallop reckons the world but jogging at a market-trot.”
“There has been a great massacre of Jews in Spain,” said Father Bruno, speaking for the first time.
All the conversation was plainly audible to the girls in the next room. When Father Bruno spoke, Belasez’s head went up suddenly, and her work stood still.
“Amen and Alleluia!” said Father Warner, who probably little suspected that he was using Hebrew words to express his abhorrence of the Hebrews.
“Nay, my brother!” answered Father Bruno, gravely. “Shall we thank God for the perdition of human souls?”
“Of course not,—of course not!” interposed Father Nicholas, quickly. “I am sure our Brother Warner thanked God for the vindication of the Divine honour.”
“And is not the Divine honour more fully vindicated by far,” demanded Father Bruno, “when a soul is saved from destruction, than when it is plunged therein?”
“Yes, yes, no doubt, no doubt!” eagerly assented Father Nicholas, who seemed afraid of a fracas.
“Curs!” said Father Warner, contemptuously. “They all belong to their father the Devil, and to him let them go. I would not give a farthing for a Jew’s soul in the market.”
Belasez’s eyes were like stars.
“Brother,” said Father Bruno, so gravely that it was almost sadly, “our Master was not of your way of thinking. He bade His apostles to begin at Jerusalem when they preached the good tidings of His kingdom. Have we done it?”
Master Aristoteles’ “Ah!” might mean anything, as the hearer chose to take it.
“Of course they did so. The Church was first at Jerusalem, before Saint Peter transferred it to Rome,” snapped Father Warner.
“Pardon me, my brother. I did not ask, Did they do so? I said, Have we done so?” explained Bruno.
“How could we?” responded Father Nicholas in a perplexed tone. “I never came across any of the evil race—holy Mary be my guard!—and if I had done, I should have crossed over the road, lest they should cast a spell on me.”
Belasez’s smile was one of contemptuous amusement.
“Pure foy! If I ever came across one, I should spit in his face!” cried Warner.
“Two might play at that game,” was the cool observation of Bruno.
“I’d have him hung on the new machine if he did!” exclaimed Warner.
The new machine was the gibbet, first set up in England in this year.
“Brethren,” said Bruno, “we are verily guilty, one and all. For weeks this winter, and I hear also last summer, there has been in this house a maiden of the Hebrew race, who has never learned the faith of Christ the Lord, has probably never heard His name except in blasphemy. Which of us four of His servants shall answer to God for that child’s soul?”
Margaret expected Belasez’s eyes to flash, and her lip to curl in scorn. To her great surprise, the girl caught up her work and went on with it hastily. Doucebelle, watching her with deep yet concealed interest, fancied she saw tears glistening on the samite.
“Really, I never—you put it so seriously, Brother Bruno!—I never looked at the matter in that way. I did not think—” and Father Nicholas came to a full stop. “You see, I have been so very busy illuminating that missal for the Lady. I really never never considered the thing so seriously.”
“Brother Nicholas,” answered Bruno, “the Devil was serious enough when he tempted our mother Eva. And Christ was serious when He bore away your sins and mine, and nailed them to His cross. And the angels of God are serious, when they look down and see us fighting with sin in the dark and weary day. What! God is serious, and Satan is serious, and the holy angels are serious,—and can we not be serious? Will the great Judge take that answer, think you? ‘Lord, I was so busy illuminating and writing, that I let the maiden slip into perdition, and Thou wilt find her there.’”
Belasez’s head was bowed lower than before.
“Brother Bruno! You are unreasonable,” interposed Warner. “We all have our duties to our Lord and Lady. And as to that contemptible insect in the Lady’s chamber,—well, I do not know what you think, but I would not scorch my fingers pulling her out of Erebus.”
The dark brows of the young Jewess were drawn close together.
“Ah, Brother Warner!” said Bruno. “Christ my Master scorched His fingers so much with me, that I cannot hesitate to burn mine in His service.”
Marie and her arithmetic seemed forgotten by all parties.
“I am afraid, Brother Bruno,” faltered Father Nicholas, “really afraid, I may have been too remiss. The poor girl!—of course, though she is a Jew—and they are very bad people, very—yet she has a soul to be saved; yes, undoubtedly. I will see what I can do. There are only about a dozen leaves of the missal,—and then that treatise on grace of congruity that I promised the Abbot of Ham—and,—let me see! I believe I engaged to write something for the Prior of Saint Albans. What was it, now? Where are my tables? Oh, here!—yes,—ah! that would not take long: a week might do it, I think. I will see,—I really will see, Brother Bruno,—when these little matters are disposed of,—what I can do for the girl.”
“Do! Give her ratsbane!” sneered Warner laconically.
Bruno’s reply was a quotation.
“‘While thy servant was busy here and there, he was gone.’”
Then he rose and left the room.
“Dear, dear!” said Father Nicholas. “Our brother Bruno means well,—very well indeed, I am sure: but those enthusiastic people like him—don’t you think they are very unsettling, Brother Warner? Really, he has made me feel quite uncomfortable. Why, the world would have to be turned upside down! We could never write, nor paint, nor cultivate letters—we should have to be incessantly preaching and confessing people.”
“Stuff! The fellow’s an ass!” was Father Warner’s decision. “Ha, chétife!—what has become of that little monkey, Damsel Marie? I must go and see after her.”
And he followed his colleague. Father Nicholas gathered his papers together, and from the silence that ensued, the girls gathered that the ante-chamber was deserted.
“Belasez,” said Doucebelle that night, as she was brushing her hair—the two slept in the wardrobe—“wert thou very angry with Father Bruno, this morning?”
Belasez looked up quickly.
“With him? No! I thought—”
But the thought progressed no further till Doucebelle said—“Well?”
“I thought,” said Belasez, combing out her own hair very energetically, “that I had at last found even a Christian priest who was worthy of him of whom the Bishop of Lincoln preached,—him whom you believe to be Messiah.”
“Then,” said Doucebelle, greatly delighted, “thou wilt listen to Father Bruno, if he talks to thee?”
“I would not if I could help it,” was Belasez’s equivocal answer.
“Belasez, I cannot quite understand thee. Sometimes thou seemest so different from what thou art at other times.”
“Because I am different. Understand me! Do I understand myself? The Holy One—to whom be praise!—He understands us all.”
“But sometimes thou art willing to hear and talk, and at others thou art close shut up like a coffer.”
“Because that is how I feel.”
“I wish thou wouldst tell thy feelings to Father Bruno.”
“I shall wait till he asks me, I think,” said Belasez a little drily.
“Well, I am sure he will.”
“I am not sure that he will—twice.”
“Why, what wouldst thou say to him?”
“He will hear if he wants to know.”
And Belasez thereupon “shut up like a coffer,” and seemed to have lost her tongue for the remainder of the night.
Doucebelle determined that, if she could possibly contrive it, without wounding the feelings of Father Nicholas, her next confession should be made to Father Bruno. He seemed to her to be a man made of altogether different metal from his colleagues. Master Aristoteles kept himself entirely to physical ailments, and never heard a confession, except from the sick in emergency. Father Nicholas was a very easy confessor, for his thoughts were usually in his beloved study, and whatever the confession might be, absolution seemed to follow as a matter of course. If his advice were asked on any point outside philology in all its divisions, he generally appeared to be rather taken by surprise, and almost as much puzzled as his penitent. His strongest reproof was—
“Ah, that was wrong, my child. Thou must not do that again.”
So that confession to Father Nicholas, while eminently comfortable to a dead soul, was anything but satisfying to a living one.
Father Warner was a terrible confessor. His minute questions penetrated into every corner of soul and body. He took nothing for granted, good nor bad. Absolution was hard to get from him, and not to be had on any terms but those of severe penance. And yet it seemed to Doucebelle that there was an inner sanctuary of her heart from which he never even tried to lift the veil, a depth in her nature which he never approached. Was it because there was no such depth in his, and therefore he necessarily ignored its existence in another?
In one way or another, they were all miserable comforters. She wished to try Father Bruno.
Most unwittingly, Father Nicholas helped her to gain her end by requesting a holiday. He had heard a rumour that a Latin manuscript had been discovered in the library of Saint Albans’ Abbey, and Father Nicholas, in whose eyes the lost books of Livy were of more consequence than any thing else in the world except the Order of Saint Benedict, was unhappy till he had seen the manuscript.
The Countess, in the Earl’s absence, readily granted his request, and Doucebelle’s fear of hurting the feelings of her kind-hearted though careless old friend were no longer a bar in the way of consulting Father Bruno.
Father Warner, who was confessing the other half of the household, growled his disapprobation when Doucebelle begged to be included in the penitents of Father Bruno.
“Something new always catches a silly girl’s fancy!” said he.
But Doucebelle had no scruple about hurting his feelings, since she did not believe in their existence. So when her turn came, she knelt down in Bruno’s confessional.
At first she wondered if he were about to prove like Father Nicholas, for he did not ask her a single question till she stopped of herself. Then, instead of referring to any thing which she had said, he put one of weighty import.
“Daughter, what dost thou know of Jesus Christ?”
“I know,” said Doucebelle, “that He came to take away the sins of the world, and I humbly trust that He will take away mine.”
“That He will?” repeated Bruno. “Is it not done already?”
“I thought, Father, that it would be done when I die.”
“What has thy dying to do with that? If it be done at all, it was done when He died.”
“Then where are my sins, Father?” asked Doucebelle, feeling very much astonished. This was a new doctrine to her. But Bruno was an Augustinian, and well read in the writings of the Founder of his Order.
“They are where God cannot find them, my child. Therefore there is little fear of thy finding them. Understand me,—if thou hast laid them upon Christ our Lord.”
“I know I have,” said Doucebelle in a low voice.
“Then on His own authority I assure thee that He has taken them.”
“Father I may I really believe that?”
“May! Thou must, if thou wouldst not make God a liar.”
“But what, then, have I to do?”
“What wouldst thou do for me, if I had rescued thee from a burning house, and lost my own life in the doing of it?”
“I could do nothing,” said Doucebelle, feeling rather puzzled.
“Wouldst thou love or hate me?”
“O Father! can there be any question?”
“And supposing there were some thing left in the world for which thou knewest I had cared—a favourite dog or cat—wouldst thou leave it to starve, or take some care of it?”
“I think,” was Doucebelle’s earnest answer, “I should care for it as though it were my own child.”
“Then, daughter, see thou dost that for Him who did lose His own life in rescuing thee. Love Him with every fibre of thine heart, and love what He has loved for His sake. He has left with thee those for whom on earth He cared most,—the poor, the sick, the unhappy. Be they unto thee as thy dearest, and He the dearest of all.”
This was very unlike any counsel which Doucebelle had ever before received from a confessor. There was something here of which she could take hold. Not that Father Bruno had suggested a new course of action so much as that he had supplied a new motive power. To do good, to give alms, to be kind to poor and sick people, Doucebelle had been taught already: but the reason for it was either the abstract notion that it was the right thing to do, or that it would help to increase her little heap of human merit.
To all minds, but in particular to an ignorant one, there is an enormous difference between the personal and the impersonal. Tell a child that such a thing must be done because it is right, and the motive power is faint and vague, not unlikely to be overthrown by the first breath of temptation. But let the child understand that to do this thing will please or displease God, and you have supplied a far stronger energising power, in the intelligible reference to the will of a living Person.
Doucebelle felt this—as, more or less, we all do.
“Father,” she said, after a momentary pause, “I want your advice.”
“State thy perplexity, my daughter.”
“I hope, Father, you will not be angry; but a few days ago, when you and the other priests were talking in the ante-chamber about Belasez, the door was open, and we heard every word in the bower.”
“Did Belasez hear what was said?”
“Yes.”
“Ha! What did she say?”
“I asked her, at night, whether what you had said had wounded her. And she said, No: but she thought there was one Christian priest who was like what the Scripture described Christ to be.”
“Did she say that?” There was a tone of tender regret in the priest’s voice.
“She did. But, Father, I want to know how to deal with Belasez. Sometimes she will talk to me quite freely, and tell me all her thoughts and feelings: at other times I cannot get a word out of her.”
“Let her alone at the other times. What is the state of her mind?”
“She seems to have been very much struck, Father, with a sermon from your Bishop, wherein he proved out of her own Scriptures, she says, that our Lord is the Messiah whom the Jews believe. But I do not know if she has reached any point further than that. I think she hardly knows what to believe.”
“Only those sermons do good which God preaches,” said Bruno. Perhaps he spoke rather to himself than to Doucebelle. “Whenever the maiden will speak to thee, do not repulse her. Lead her, to the best of thy power, to see that Christ is God’s one cure for all evil. Yet He must teach it first to thyself.”
“I think He has done so—a little,” answered Doucebelle. “But, Father, will you not speak to her?”
“My child, we will both wait upon God, and speak the words He gives us, at the time He will. And remember,—whatever blunders men make,—Belasez is, after the flesh, nearer akin to Him than thou art. She is the kinswoman of the Lord Jesus. Let that thought spur thee on, if thou faint by the way.”
“Father! Our Lord was not a Jew?”
“He was a Jew, my daughter.”
Hardly any news could more have amazed Doucebelle.
“But why then do people use them so harshly?”
“Thou hadst better ask the people,” answered Bruno, drily.
“Father, is it right to use Jews so?”
“Thou hadst better ask the Lord.”
“What does He say, Father?”
“He said, speaking to Abraham, the father of them all, ‘I will bless him that blesseth thee, and curse him that curseth thee.’”
“Oh, I am so glad!” cried Doucebelle. “If you please, Father, I could not help loving Belasez: but I tried hard not to do so, because I thought it was wicked. It cannot be wrong to love a Jew, if Christ Himself were one.”
Bruno did not reply immediately. When he did, it was with a slight quiver in his voice which surprised Doucebelle.
“It can never be wrong to love,” he said. “But, daughter, let not thy love stop at liking the maid’s company. Let it go on till thou canst take it into Heaven.”
The strangest of all strange ideas was this to Doucebelle. She had been taught that love was always a weakness, and only too frequently a sin. That so purely earthly a thing could be taken into Heaven astonished her beyond measure.
“Father!” she said, in a tone of mingled amazement and inquiry.
“What now, my daughter?”
“People always speak of love as weak, if not wicked.”
“People often talk of what they do not understand, my child. ‘God is love.’ Think not, therefore, that God resembles a worldly fancy which springs to-day, and fades away to-morrow. His is the heavenly love which can never die, which is ready to sacrifice all things, which so looks to the true welfare of the beloved that it will give thee any earthly suffering rather than see thee sink into perdition by thy sins. This is real love, daughter: and thou canst not sin in giving it to Belasez or to any other.”
“Yet, Father,” said Doucebelle in a puzzled tone, “the religious give up love when they go into the cloister. I do not understand. A Sister of Saint Ursula may not leave her convent, even if her own mother lies dying, and pleads hard to see her. And though some priests do wed,”—this had not yet, in England, ceased to be the case—“yet people always seem to think the celibate priests more holy, as if that were more in accordance with the will of God. Yet God tells us to love each other. I cannot quite understand.”
If Doucebelle could have seen, as well as spoken, through the confessional grating, assuredly she would have stopped sooner. For the agony that was working in every line of Father Bruno’s face would have been terrible to her to see. But she only thought that it was a long while before he answered her, and she wondered at the hard, constrained tone in his voice.
“Child!” he said, “does any one but God ‘quite understand’? Do we understand ourselves?—and how much less each other? It is only love that understands. He who most loves God will best understand men. And for the rest,—O Lord who hast loved us, pardon the blunders and misunderstandings of Thy people, and save Thy servants that trust in Thee!—Now go, my child,—unless thou hast more to say. Absolvo te.”
Doucebelle rose and retired. But she did not know that Father Bruno heard no more confessions. She only heard that he was not at home when dinner was served; and when he appeared at supper, he looked very worn and white, as if after a weary journey.