The White Rose of Langley Part 13

It was early morning, for the illuminator was at work betimes. From a little cottage visible across the green, he saw a peasant go forth to his daily work, his wife watching him a moment from the door of the hut, and two little children calling to him lovingly to come back soon.

"And life also is full of Thy riches," whispered the solitary monk.

"This poor hind hath none other riches than what Thine hand hath given him. Is he in truth the poorer for it? We live on Thy daily bounty even more than he; for like Thy lilies, we toil not, neither do we spin.

Yet Thou hast given to him, as sweetening to his toil, solace denied by Thy holy will to us. Wherefore denied to us? Because we are set apart for Thee. So were Thy priests of old, in Thy Temple at Jerusalem: yet it was not denied to them. Why should we love Thee less for loving little children?"

The monk turned back abruptly to his work.

"Ah me! these be problems beyond mine art. And whatso be the solving of the general matter, I have no doubt as to Thy will _for me_. The joys of earth be not for me; but Thou art my portion, O Lord! And I am content--ay, satisfied abundantly. Maybe, on the golden hills of the _Urbs Beata_, we shall find joys far pa.s.sing the sweetest here, kept for that undefouled company which shall sue the Lamb whithersoever He goeth.

And could any joy pa.s.s that?"

The venerable head was bent over the parchment, upon which the grotesque outline of a griffin began to grow, twisted round a very conventional tree, with the stem issuing from its mouth, and its elongated tail executing marvellous spiral curves. The illuminator was taken by surprise the next instant, and the curve of the griffin's tail then pending was by no means round in consequence.

"Alway at work, Father Wilfred?" [A fict.i.tious person.]

"Bertram Lyngern," said the monk calmly, "thou hast marred my griffin."

"What, have I made him a wyvern?"

"That had less mattered. A twist of his tail is square, thy sudden speech being the cause thereof."

"Let be, Father Wilfred. 'Tis a new pattern."

The monk smiled, but shook his head, and proceeded to erase the faulty strokes by means of a large piece of pumice-stone. Bertram sat contemplating his friend's work, curled up in the wide stone window-ledge, to which he had climbed from the horse-block below it.

The lattice was open, so there was no hindrance to conversation.

"I would I were a knight!" said Bertram suddenly, after a few minutes'

silence on both sides.

"To wear gilded spurs?" inquired Wilfred calmly resuming his pen, and going on with the griffin.

"Thou countest me surely not such a loon, Father Wilfred? No,--I long to be great. I feel as though greatness stirred within me. But what can I do,--a squire? If I were a knight I could sign my shoulder with the holy cross, and go fight for our Lord's sepulchre. That were something worth. But to dangle at the heels of my Lord Edward all the day long, and fly an half-dozen hawks, and meditate on pretty sayings to the Lady's damsels, and eat venison, and dance--Father Wilfred, is this life meet for a man's living?"

The illuminator laid his pen down, and looked up at the lad.

"Bertram," he said, "just fifty years gone, I was what thou art, and my thoughts then were thine."

"Thou wert, Father?" responded Bertram in an interested tone. "Well, and what was the end?"

"The end is not yet. But the next thing was, that I did as thou fain wouldst do:--I signed me with the good red cross, and I went to the Holy Land."

"And thou earnest back, great of name, and blessed in soul?"

"I came back, having won no name, and with no blessing, for I knew more of evil than when I set forth."

"But, Father, at our Lord's sepulchre!" urged Bertram.

"Youngling," said Wilfred, a rare, sweet smile flitting across his lips, "dost thou blunder as Mary did? Is the Lord yet in the sepulchre? 'He is not here; He is risen.' And why then should His sepulchre be holier than other graves, when He that made the holiness is there no longer?"

"But where then is our Lord?" asked Bertram, rather perplexed.

"He is where thou wouldst have Him," was the quiet answer. "If that be in thine heart, ay:--and if no, no."

Bertram meditated for a little while upon this reply.

"But seest thou any reason, Father, wherefore I should not become a great man?" he said, reverting to his original topic.

"I see no reason at all, Bertram Lyngern, wherefore thou shouldst not become a very great man."

Still Bertram was dissatisfied. He had an instinctive suspicion that his great man and Wilfred's were not exactly the same person.

"But what meanest by a great man, Father?"

"What meanest thou?"

"I mean a warrior," said the lad, "dauntless in war, and faithful in love--brave, n.o.ble, and high-souled, alway and every whither."

"And so mean I."

"But I mean one that men shall talk of, and tell much of his n.o.ble deeds and mighty prowess."

"Were he less brave without?"

"He were less puissant, Father."

Wilfred did not reply for a minute, but devoted himself to hanging golden apples from the stiff boughs of his very medieval tree.

"The heroes of the world and those of the Church," he said at last, "be rarely the same men. A man cannot be an hero in all things. The warrior is not the statesman, nor is neither of them the bishop. Thou must choose thy calling, lad."

"Yet a true hero must be an hero all the world over, Father--in every calling."

"How much hast heard of one Master Vegelius?"

"Never afore this minute."

"I thought so much."

"Who was he?" inquired Bertram.

"The best and most cunning limner of this or any land."

"Oh! Only a scriptorius?"

"Only a scriptorius," said the monk quietly--not at all offended. "And it may be that he never heard of some of thy heroes."

"My heroes are Alexander and Charlemagne," said Bertram proudly. "He must have heard of them."

Wilfred dipped his pen in the ink with a rather amused smile.