The Ravens and the Angels, with Other Stories and Parables

by Elizabeth Rundle Charles

All this little Marie felt, as she lay hour by hour alone on her pallet; felt, not thought, for the roots of true thoughts in after-life lie deep in the feelings of the child's heart, which the child cannot utter even to itself, and which some lips indeed are never opened in this life to utter to any one: a silence not of much moment, since this is the world for learning rather than for uttering, and many of our most eloquent utterances here would seem but as babes' lispings there; while many lips which have but lisping or stammering speech here, will be opened in very glorious singing there.

For are not reverence and love the highest religious lessons of childhood; and indeed of all this life, which is but a childhood? a reverent uplooking sense of Love and Power unbounded, above, yet very near us, such as happy children learn from a holy mother's looks and tones; and little motherless Marie received, in some measure, from the Cathedral, interpreting to her, with its music and its beauty, the Our Father and the Apostles' Creed which she had learned from her dying mother's lips, when too little to understand anything but the sounds.

Marie was very much alone. Her father was a water-carrier, and was bearing water all day to the thirsty people in the hot streets of the city, or taking it to their homes. He had to leave quite early to draw the water fresh from the spring in the cool of the morning. And one of Marie's two great wishes was that one day she might go with him to the fountain, and drink the water fresh from the spring. Every morning he used to place all the things he thought his little girl would need within her reach; a little white wheaten loaf, a cup of milk, a jug of water, and, when he had had a prosperous day, some fresh fruit.

Marie thought her father's calling a very high and beautiful one, although she knew it was not considered glorious in the city, nor one that would make his name known and honoured. But that she thought little of; for her father had often told her no one in the city knew the name of the Architect of the Cathedral; and if his name had faded away from the memories of men who counted his work the chief glory of their city, it was plain, Marie thought, that the records of the city must be very imperfect and very little worth caring about, and that, probably, there were better records kept somewhere else on quite a different plan.

Water-carrying, besides not being a glorious calling in that city, was not a lucrative one; so that, in order to eke out the daily bread, Marie had learned to plait straw for fruit baskets. Agatha, the old woman who sold fruit by the Cathedral porch, bought them of her; and in return did, not without many grumblings, all the little household work Marie would have done with such deft fingers and such a glad heart, had she been able.

Sometimes, moreover, especially on a rainy day, Mark, Agatha's little orphan grandson, would spend his play-hours with Marie, and she would mend his poor ragged clothes as well as she could, and make him wonderful little toy-baskets of straw lined with orange-peel, and balls of rags; and in return he would sing her little songs, and the multiplication-table, and sometimes hymns about Paradise, and the Living Fountains, and the Temple and the Singers there.

This was Marie's visible world; her father and the Cottage, Agatha and her fruit-stall, and little Mark, and the Cathedral.

To interpret it, she had the Our Father and the Apostles' Creed. Or rather, she had them to interpret each other; His invisible things being understood by the things that are seen, and our visible things by the things that are not seen.

As to how this interpretation went on, I could say more another time. My story now is simply of the Cottage and the Cathedral.

From the window by which Marie's bed lay, she could see Agatha's fruit-stall, and the Cathedral. By propping herself up she could command the fruit-stall, and see a great deal of the world, though not in its highest circles. By leaning back as far as she could in one corner, she could see to the top of the Cathedral tower, with its wonderful crown of fretted stone; common stone sculptured by man's heart and hands into a beauty greater than that of any diadem of gems.