“It is only a fragment,” she said, “beginning abruptly where I left off this afternoon; but perhaps it will show you more of what Bertrand is.”
“Anne,” I asked suddenly, “don’t you miss him—more than any of the others?”
“No—yes,” she answered, then paused thoughtfully. “Yes,” she said at last, “I suppose I do. Because, so long as I know he is living somewhere on this earth, it seems possible for my feet to go to him and my eyes to see his face. But, after all, none of them seem far away. We are brought so near in the great Communion, in prayers—in everything. In fact, Joanne—does it seem very cold-hearted?—oftenest I do not miss them at all; God so makes up for every loss.”
I was crying by this time, for my heartache was constant; and Anne came and kissed me, and looked distressed. “I ought not to trouble you,” she said. “Did I? I did not mean to hurt you.”
“Oh! no,” I answered. “Only why should I not be as resigned as you?”
“Joanne darling!” she exclaimed, “you are that much more than I am. Can’t you see? You feel—God causes you to feel it—keenly. That is your great cross; and so, when you do not murmur, but say, ‘God’s will be done,’ you are resigned. But that is not the cross he gives to me. Instead, he makes bereavement light to me by choosing to reveal his mercies; and I must take great care to correspond to his grace. Bertrand warned me solemnly of that. And yet this is not all I mean. Perhaps you will understand better when you have heard the legend.”
She sat on the floor close beside me, and held my hand. I thanked God for her, she comforted me so. I was always hungry then for visible love; but by degrees, and partly through her, he taught me to be content with a love that is invisible.
“There was once a monk,” she read, “the youngest of the brotherhood, who was left to keep the watch from midnight until dawn. Through the windows the moonbeams fell, mingling with the light that burned before the tabernacle, and with the gleam of the monk’s small taper. Outside, the sea was smooth like glass, and the stars shone brightly, and a long line of glory stretched from shore to shore. Lost in supplication, the monk lay prostrate before the altar. His thoughts and prayers were wandering far away—to the sick upon their beds of pain, to travellers on land and sea, to mourners sunk in loneliness or in despair, to the poor who had no helper, to little children, to the dying; most of all, to the tempted, wherever they might be.
“He was intensely earnest, and he had a loving temperament and a strong imagination which had found fitting curb and training in the devout practice of meditation. The prayers he used were no mere form to him; he seemed actually to behold those for whom he interceded, actually to feel their needs and sore distress. This was nothing new, but to-night the power of realization came upon him as never before. He saw the dying in their final anguish; he suffered with the suffering, and felt keen temptations to many a deed of evil, and marked Satan’s messengers going up and down upon the earth, seeking to capture souls. Sharper than all else was the conflict he underwent with doubts quite new to him—doubts of the use or power of his prayers. Still he prayed on, in spite of the keen sense of unworthiness to pray. He would not give place for a moment to the suggestion that his prayers were powerless. Again and again he fortified himself with the Name of all-prevailing might. And then it seemed to him, in the dim candle-light and among the pale moonbeams, that the Form upon the crucifix opened its eyes and smiled at him, and that from the lips came a voice saying, ‘Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do.’
“The hour came to tend the light; he knew it. But he knew, too, that the sea without was calm, even like the crystal sea before the Throne, save where the wild currents that never rested were surging white with foam and uttering hoarse murmurs. He knew that the night was marvellously still; that there was no wind, not even enough to stir the lightest leaf. What mariner could err, even though for once the light of the monks grew dim—nay, even if it failed? Could he leave that glorious vision, in order to trim a lantern of which there was no need; or cease his prayers for perishing souls, in order to give needless help to bodies able to protect themselves? These thoughts swept through his mind, and his choice was hastily made to remain before the altar; and even as he made it the vision faded, yet with it, or with his decision, all temptation to doubt vanished too. If devils had been working upon him to cause him to cease from intercession, they left him quite free now to pray—with words, too, of such seeming power as he had never used before.