“Then what canst thou do? Could thy mother help thee, or thy brother?”
“My mother would command me to dismiss such ideas from my mind, on pain of her curse. But I cannot dismiss them. And for Delecresse—I think he would stab me if he knew.”
“What sort of thoughts are they?”
“Wilt thou keep my secret, if I tell thee?”
“Indeed, I will not utter them without thy leave.” Belasez cut off her silk, laid down the armilaus, and clasped both hands round her knee.
“When your great festivals draw nigh,” she said, “four times in every year, we Israelites are driven into your churches, and forced to listen to a discourse from one of your priests. Until that day, I have never paid any attention to what I deemed blasphemy. I have listened for a moment, but at the first word of error, or the first repetition of one of your sacred names, I have always stopped my ears, and heard no more. But this last Midsummer, when we were driven into Lincoln Cathedral, the new Bishop was in the pulpit. And he spake not like the other priests. I could not stop my ears. Why should I, when he read the words of one of our own prophets, and in the holy tongue, rendering it into French as he went on? And Delecresse said it was correctly translated, for I asked him afterwards. He saw nothing in it different from usual. But it was terrible to me! He read words that I never knew were in our Scriptures—concerning One whom it seemed to me must be—must be, He whom you call Messiah. ‘As a root out of a dry ground’—‘no form nor comeliness’—‘no beauty that we should desire Him,’—‘despised and rejected of men’—and lastly, ‘we hid our faces from Him.’ For we did, Doucebelle,—we did! I could think of nothing else for a while. For we did not hide them from others. We welcomed Judas of Galilee, and Barchocheba, and many another who rose up in our midst, claiming to be sent of God. But He, who claimed to be The Sent One,—we crucified Him. We did not crucify them. We hid our faces from Him, and from Him alone. And then I heard more words, for the Bishop kept reading on. ‘We all like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way’—ah, was that not true of the dispersed of Judah?—‘and the Lord hath made to meet upon Him the iniquities of us all.’ Doucebelle, it was like carrying a lamp into a dark chamber, and beholding every thing in it suddenly illuminated. Was that what it all meant? Was the Bishop right, when he said afterwards, that it was not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sin? Were they all not realities, as I had always thought them, but shadows, pointing forward through the ages, to the One who was to come, to the Blood which could take away sin? Did our own Scripture say so? ‘The Man that is My Fellow’—he read it, from one of our very own prophets. And ‘we hid our faces from Him!’ If He from whom we hid our faces—for there was but one such—if He were the Sent of God, the Man that is His Fellow, the Lamb whose blood maketh atonement for the soul,—why then, what could there be for us but tribulation and wrath and indignation from before the Holy One for ever? Was it any marvel that we were punished seventy times for our sins, if we had done that?”
Belasez drew a long breath, and altered her position.
“And, if we had not done that, what had we done? The old perplexity came back on me, worse than ever. What had we done? We were not idolaters any more; we were not profane; we kept the rest of the holy Sabbath. Yet the Blessed One was angry with us,—He hid His face from us: and the centuries went on, and we were exiles still,—still under the displeasure of our heavenly King. And what had we done?—if we had not hidden our faces from Him who was the Man that is His Fellow. And then—”
Belasez paused again, and a softer, sadder expression came into her eyes.
“And then the Bishop read some other words,—I suppose they were from your sacred books: I do not think they came from ours. He read that ‘because this Man continueth to eternity, untransferable hath He the priesthood.’ He read that ‘if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, and He is the propitiation for our sins.’ And again he read some grand words, said by this Man Himself,—‘I am the First and the Last, and the Living One: and I was dead, and am alive for evermore; and with Me are the keys of Sheol and of death.’ Oh, it was so different, Doucebelle, from your priests’ sermons generally! There was not a word about that strange thing you call the Church,—not a word about the maiden whom you worship. It was all about Him who was to be the Sent of God. And I thought—may I be forgiven of the Holy One, if it were wicked!—I thought this was the Priest that would suit me: this was the Prophet that could teach me: this was the Man, who, if only I knew that to do it was truth and not error, was light and not darkness, was life and not death, I could be content to follow to the world’s end. And how am I to know it?”