“I saw young Mrs. Martin last week,” she said, “with her little girl in her lap. Amy had her arms round her mother’s neck, and was being rocked to and fro; and every time she rocked she said ‘Oh, mother.’”
“But then,” said Isabel, after a moment’s silence, “she was only a child.”
“‘Except ye become like little children—’” quoted Mistress Margaret softly—“you see, my Isabel, we are nothing more than children with God and His Blessed Mother. To say ‘Hail Mary, Hail Mary,’ is the best way of telling her how much we love her. And then this string of beads is like Our Lady’s girdle, and her children love to finger it, and whisper to her. And then we say our paternosters, too; and all the while we are talking she is shewing us pictures of her dear Child, and we look at all the great things He did for us, one by one; and then we turn the page and begin again.”
“I see,” said Isabel; and after a moment or two’s silence Mistress Margaret got up and went into the house.
The girl sat still with her hands clasped round her knee. How strange and different this religion was to the fiery gospel she had heard last year at Northampton from the harsh stern preacher, at whose voice a veil seemed to rend and show a red-hot heaven behind! How tender and simple this was—like a blue summer’s sky with drifting clouds! If only it was true! If only there were a great Mother whose girdle was of beads strung together, which dangled into every Christian’s hands; whose face bent down over every Christian’s bed; and whose mighty and tender arms that had held her Son and God were still stretched out beneath her other children. And Isabel, whose soul yearned for a mother, sighed as she reminded herself that there was but “one Mediator between God and man—the man, Christ Jesus.”
And so the time went by, like an outgoing tide, silent and steady. The old nun did not talk much to the girl about dogmatic religion, for she was in a difficult position. She was timid certainly of betraying her faith by silence, but she was also timid of betraying her trust by speech. Sometimes she felt she had gone too far, sometimes not far enough; but on the whole her practice was never to suggest questions, but only to answer them when Isabel asked; and to occupy herself with affirmative rather than with destructive criticism. More than this she hesitated to do out of honour for the dead; less than this she dared not do out of love for God and Isabel. But there were three or four conversations that she felt were worth waiting for; and the look on Isabel’s face afterwards, and the sudden questions she would ask sometimes after a fit of silence, made her friend’s heart quicken towards her, and her prayers more fervent.
The two were sitting together one December day in Isabel’s upstairs room and the girl, who had just come in from a solitary walk, was half kneeling on the window-seat and drumming her fingers softly on the panes as she looked out at the red western sky.
“I used to think,” she said, “that Catholics had no spiritual life; but now it seems to me that in comparison we Puritans have none. You know so much about the soul, as to what is from God and what from the Evil One; and we have to grope for ourselves. And yet our Saviour said that His sheep should know His voice. I do not understand it.” And she turned towards Mistress Margaret who had laid down her work and was listening.
“Dear child,” she said, “if you mean our priests and spiritual writers, it is because they study it. We believe in the science of the soul; and we consult our spiritual guides for our soul’s health, as the leech for our body’s health.”
“But why must you ask the priest, if the Lord speaks to all alike?”