“She only said, ‘My life is dreary,
He cometh not,’ she said:
She said, ‘I am aweary, weary,
I would that I were dead!’”
Tennyson.
It was fortunate for Bruno de Malpas that he had a friend in Bishop Grosteste, whose large heart and clear brain were readily interested in his wish to return from regular to secular orders. He smoothed the path considerably, and promised him a benefice in his diocese if the dispensation could be obtained. But the last was a lengthy process, and some months passed away before the answer could be received from Rome.
It greatly scandalised Hawise and Eva—for different reasons—to see how very little progress was made by Beatrice in that which in their eyes was the Christian religion. It was a comfort to them to reflect that she had been baptised as an infant, and therefore in the event of sudden death had a chance of going to Heaven, instead of the dreadful certainty of being shut up in Limbo,—a place of vague locality and vaguer character, being neither pleasant nor painful, but inhabited by all the hapless innocents whose heathen or careless Christian parents suffered them to die unregenerated. But both of them were sorely shocked to discover, when she had been about two months at Bury, that poor Beatrice was still ignorant of the five commandments of the Church. Nor was this all: she irreverently persisted in her old inquiry of “What is the Church?” and sturdily demanded what right the Church had to give commandments.
Hawise was quite distressed. It was not proper,—a phrase which, with her, was the strongest denunciation that could be uttered. Nobody had ever asked such questions before: ergo, they ought never to be asked. Every sane person knew perfectly well what the Church was (though, when gently urged by Beatrice, Hawise backed out of any definition), and no good Catholic could possibly require telling. And as to so shocking a supposition as that the Church had no right to issue her own commands,—well, it was not proper!
Eva’s objection was quite as strong, but of a different sort. She really could not understand what Beatrice wanted. If the priest—or the Church—they were very much the same thing—told her what to do, could she not rest and be thankful? It was a great deal less trouble than everlastingly thinking for one’s self.
“No one of any note ever thinks for himself,” chimed in Hawise.
“Then I am glad I am not of any note!” bluntly responded Beatrice.
“You a De Malpas! I am quite shocked!” said Hawise.
“God made me with a heart and a conscience,” was the answer. “If He had not meant me to use them, He would not have given them to me.”
At that point Beatrice left the room in answer to a call from the Countess; and Hawise, turning to her companions, remarked in a whisper that it must be that dreadful Jewish blood on the mother’s side which had given her such very improper notions. They were so low! “For my part,” she added, “if it were proper to say so, I should remark that I cannot imagine why Father Bruno does not see that she understands something of Christianity—but of course one must not criticise a priest.”