Earl Hubert's Daughter Part 9

"Ah, Damsel," said Belasez with a sad smile, "this seems to you a very, very little matter! How shall a Jew and a Christian ever understand each other? For it is life or death to us. It is a question of obeying, or of disobeying--not of doing something we fancy, or do not fancy."

"Yes, but holy Church would decide it for you," urged Margaret, earnestly.

"Damsel, your words are strange to my ears. The Holy One (to whom be praise!) has decided it long ago. 'Ye shall _not_ make unto you any graven image: ye shall _not_ bow down to them, nor wors.h.i.+p them.' The command is given. What difference can it make to us, that the thing you call the Church dares to disregard it? I scarcely understand what 'the Church' is. If I rightly know what my damsel means, it signifies all the Christians. And Christians are Gentiles. How can the sons of Israel take laws from them? And to speak as if they could abrogate the law of Him that sitteth in the heavens, before whom they are all less than nothing and vanity! It is a strange tongue in which my damsel speaks. I do not understand it."

Neither did Margaret understand Belasez. She sat and looked at her, with her mind in bewildered confusion. To her, the authority of the Church was paramount,--was the only irrefragable thing. And here was something which looked like another Church, setting itself up with some unaccountable and unheard-of claim to be older, truer, better!-- something which denied that the Church--with horror be it whispered!-- had any right to make laws!--which referred to a law, and a Legislator, so high above the Church that it scarcely regarded the Church as worth mention in the matter at all! Margaret felt stunned.

"But G.o.d speaks through the Church!" she gasped.

"If that were so, they would speak the same thing," was Belasez's unanswerable response.

Margaret felt pushed into a corner, and did not know what to say next.

The difference between her point of view and that of Belasez was so vast, that considerations which would have silenced any one else at once pa.s.sed as the idle wind by her. And Margaret could not see how to alter it.

"I must ask Father Nicholas to show thee how it is," she said at last in a kindly manner. "I am only an ignorant girl. But he can explain to thee."

"Can he?" said Belasez. "What explanations of his, or any one's, can prove that man may please himself about obeying his Maker? He will tell me--does my damsel think I have never listened to a Christian priest?-- he will tell me to offer incense to yonder gilded image. Had I not better offer it to myself? I am a living daughter of Israel: is that not better than the stone image of a dead one?"

"Better than our blessed Lady!" cried the horrified Margaret.

"Perhaps, if she were here, a living woman, she might be the better woman of the two," said Belasez, coolly. "But a living woman, I am sure, is better than a stone image, which can neither see, nor hear, nor feel."

"Oh, but don't you know," said Margaret eagerly, as a bright idea occurred to her, "that we have the holy Father,--the Pope? He keeps the Church right; and our Lord commissioned Saint Peter, who was the first Pope, to teach every body and promised to guard him from all error."

Margaret was mentally congratulating herself on this brilliant solution of all difficulties. Belasez looked up thoughtfully. "But did He promise to guard all the successors?"

"Oh, of course!"

"I wonder--supposing He were the Messiah--if He did," said Belasez.

"Because I have sometimes thought that might explain it."

"What might explain it?"

"My damsel knows that the disciples of great teachers often corrupt their master's teaching, and in course of time they may come to teach doctrines quite different from his. It has struck me sometimes whether it might be so with you: that your Master was truly the Sent of G.o.d, and that you have so corrupted His doctrines that there is very little likeness left now. There must be very little, if He spoke according to the will of the Holy One."

"But the Church never changes," said Margaret. "Then He could not be true," said Belasez. "Oh, but Father Nicholas says the Church develops!

She always teaches the truth, but she unfolds it more and more as time goes on."

"The truth is one, my damsel. It maybe more. But it can never be different and contrary."

"But we change," urged Margaret, taking the last weapon out of her quiver. "We may need one thing to-day, and another to-morrow."

"We may. And if the original command had been even, 'Ye shall make no image _but one_,' I should think it might then, as need were, have been altered to, 'Ye may now make a thousand images.' But being, 'Ye shall make _none_' it cannot be altered. That would be to alter His character who is in all His universe the only unchangeable One."

Margaret sat and watched the progress of the embroidery, but she said no more.

CHAPTER FOUR.

THE TIME OF JACOB'S TROUBLE.

"I know that the th.o.r.n.y path I tread Is ruled with a golden line; And I know that the darker life's tangled thread, The brighter the rich design.

"For I see, though veiled from my mortal sight, G.o.d's plan is all complete; Though the darkness at present be not light, And the bitter be not sweet."

The course of public events at that time was of decidedly a stirring character. The public considered that four mock suns which had been seen during the previous winter, two snakes fighting in the sea off the south coast, and fifteen days' continuous thunder in the following March, were portents sufficiently formidable to account for any succeeding political events whatever. The Church was busy introducing the Order of Saint Francis into England. The populace were discovering how to manufacture cider, hitherto imported: and were, quite unknown to themselves, laying the foundation of their country's commercial greatness by breaking into the first vein of coal at Newcastle. In fact, the importance of this last discovery was so little perceived, that a hundred and fifty years were suffered to elapse before any advantage was taken of it.

Belasez's work was done, and entirely to the satisfaction of the Countess. So much, also, did the Princess Marjory admire it, that she requested another scarf might be worked for her, to be finished in time for her approaching marriage. She was now affianced to Gilbert de Clare, the new Earl of Pembroke. It was not without a bitter pang that Marjory had resigned her proud hope of wearing the crown of England, and had consented to become merely the wife of an English n.o.ble. But the crown was gone from her beyond recall. The fickle-hearted King, who had been merely attracted for a season by her great beauty, was now as eagerly pursuing a foreign Countess, Jeanne of Ponthieu, whom report affirmed to be equally beautiful: and perhaps Marjory was a little consoled, though she might not even admit it to herself, by the fact that Earl Gilbert was at once a much richer man than the King, and very much better-looking. She made him a good wife when the time came, and she grieved bitterly over his loss, when six years afterwards he was killed in a tournament at Hereford.

Marjory was not so particular as her sister about the work being done under her own eyes. She left pattern and colours to Belasez's taste, only expressing her wish that red and gold should predominate, as they were the tints alike of the arms of Scotland and of Clare. The Princess was to be married on the first of August, and Belasez promised that her father should deliver the scarf during his customary hawker's round in July.

The young Jewess had suffered less than might have been supposed from Levina. The Countess, without condescending to a.s.sign any reason, had quietly issued orders that Belasez's meals should be served in the ante-chamber, half an hour before the general repast was ready in the hall. In the presence of the young ladies, and not unfrequently of the Countess herself, Levina deemed it prudent to bring up apple-pie without sauce piquante, and to serve gateaux unmixed with pepper or anchovies.

Abraham became eloquent in his thanks for the kindness shown to his daughter, and the tears were in Belasez's eyes when she took leave.

"Farewell, my maid," said the Countess, addressing the latter. "Thou art a fair girl, and thou hast been a good girl. I shall miss thy pretty face in Magot's ante-chamber. We shall meet again, I doubt not.

Such work as thine is not to be lightly esteemed.--Wilt thou grudge thy treasure to me, if I ask for her again?" she added, turning to Abraham with a smile.

"Surely not, my Lady! My Lady has been as an angel of G.o.d to my darling."

"And remember, both of you, that if ye come into any trouble--as may be--and thou seekest safe shelter for thy bird, I will give it her at any time, in return for her lovely work."

This was a greater boon than it may appear. Troubles were only too likely to a.s.sail a Jewish household, and to know a place where Belasez could seek shelter and be certain of finding it, was a comfort indeed, and might at any hour be a most terrible necessity.

Abraham kissed the robe of the Countess, and poured out eloquent blessings on her. Belasez kissed her hand and that of Margaret: but the tears choked the girl's voice as she turned to follow her father.

The arguments against idolatry which Margaret had heard from Belasez were ghosts easily laid by Father Nicholas. A few vague plat.i.tudes concerning the supreme authority committed to the Apostle Peter, and through him to the Papacy (Father Nicholas discreetly left both points unenc.u.mbered by evidence),--the wickedness of listening to sceptical reasonings, and the happiness of implicit obedience to holy Church,-- were quite enough to reduce Belasez's arguments, as they remained in Margaret's mind, to the condition of uncomfortable reminiscences, which, being also wicked, it was best to forget as soon as possible.

But there had been one listener to that conversation, of whom neither party took account, and who could not forget it. This was Doucebelle de Vaux. In her brain the words of the young Jewess took root and germinated, but so silently, that no one suspected it but herself.

Father Nicholas had not the faintest idea of the importance of the question, when one morning, during the Latin lesson which he administered twice a week to the young ladies of the Castle, Doucebelle asked him the precise meaning of _adoro_.

"It means, in its original, to speak to or accost any one," said the priest; "but being now taken into the holy service of religion, it signifies to pray, to supplicate; and, thence derived--to wors.h.i.+p, to bow one's self down."

"And,--if I do not trouble you too much, Father,--would you please to tell me the difference between _adoro_ and _colo_?"

Father Nicholas was a born philologist, though in his day there was no appellation for the science. To be asked any question involving a derivation or comparison of words, was to him as a trumpet to a war-horse.

"My daughter, it is pleasure, not trouble, to me, to answer such questions as these. _Colo_ is a word which comes from the Greek, but is now obsolete in that tongue, wherein it seems to have had the meaning of feed or tend. Transferred to the Latin, it signifies to cultivate, exercise, practise, or cherish,--say rather, in any sense, to take pains about a thing: hence, used in the blessed service of religion, it is to regard, venerate, respect, or wors.h.i.+p. Therefore _cultus_, which is the noun of this verb, signifies, when referred to things inanimate, tending or cultivation to things animate, education, culture; to G.o.d and the holy saints, reverence and wors.h.i.+p. Dost thou now understand, my daughter?"

"I thank you very much, Father," said Doucebelle, quietly; "I understand now."

When she was alone, she put her information together, and thought it carefully over.

"_Non adorabis ea, neque coles_."

Images, then, were not to be reverenced, either in heart or by bodily gesture. So said the version of Scripture made by Saint Jerome, and used and authorised by the Church. But how was it that the Church allowed these things to be done? Did she not know that Scripture forbade them? Or was she above all Scripture? Practically, it looked like it.