“How fares it with my Lord?”
“How is it likely to fare,” was the sorrowful answer, “with one who hath lost hope?”
The Prior sat down opposite his guest, where he might have the opportunity of studying his countenance. He was himself the senior of the Earl, being a man of about sixty years—a man in whom there had been a great deal of fire, and in whose dark, gleaming eyes there were many sparks left yet.
“Father,” said the Earl, in a low, pained voice, “I am perplexed to understand God’s dealings with me.”
“Did you expect to understand them?” was the reply.
“Thus far I did—that I thought He would finish what He had begun. But all my life—so far as this earthly life is concerned—I have been striving for one aim, and it has come to utter wreck. I set one object before me, and I thought—I thought it was God’s will that I should pursue it. If He, by some act of His own providence, had shown me the contrary, I could have understood it better. But He has let men step in and spoil all. It is not He, but they who have brought about this wreck. My barge is not shattered by the winds and waves of God, but scuttled by the violence of pirates. My life is spoiled, and I do not understand why. I have done nothing but what I thought He intended me to do: I have set my heart on one thing, but it was a thing that I believed He meant to give me. It is all mystery to me.”
“What is spoiled, my Lord? Is it what God meant you to do, or what you meant God to do?”
The sand grew to a larger heap in the hour-glass before another word was spoken.
“Father,” said the Prince at last, “have I been intent on following my own will, when I thought I was pursuing the Lord’s will for me? Father Bevis thinks so: he gave me some very hard words before I came here. He accuses me of idolatry; of loving the creature more than the Creator—nay, of setting up my will and aim, and caring nothing for those of the Lord. In his eyes, I ought to have perceived years ago that God called me to a life apart with Him, and to have detached my heart from all but Himself and His Church. Father, it is hard enough to realise the wreck of all a man hoped and longed for: yet it is harder to know that the very hope was sin, that the longing was contrary to the Divine purpose for me. Have I so misunderstood my life? Have I so misunderstood my Master?”
The expression of the Prior’s eyes was very pitying and full of tenderness. Hard words were not what he thought needed as the medicine for that patient. They were only to be expected from Father Bevis, who had never suffered the least pang of that description of pain.