LITMIR.BIZ

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many a want, as Maude well knew, but what had Credo or Angelus to do with wants? Prayer, in her eyes, meant either long repetitions imposed as penances by the priest, or else the daily use of a charm, the omission of which might entail evil consequences. Of prayer as a real means of procuring something about which she cared, she had no more notion than Dame Agnes’s squirrel, at that moment running round his cage, had of the distance and extent of Sherwood Forest. Maude looked up in the face of her mistress with an expression of deep perplexity.

      “Child,” said the Countess, “when Dame Joan would send word touching some matter unto Dame Agnes here, falleth she a-saying unto herself of Dan Chaucer’s brave Romaunt of The Flower and the Leaf?”

      “Surely, no, Madam.”

      “Then what doth she?”

      “She cometh unto her,” said Maude, immediately adding, in a matter-of-fact way, “without she should send Mistress Sybil or some other.”

      “Good. Then arede (inform) me wherefore thou shouldst fall a-saying the Credo when thou wouldst send word of thy need unto God, any more than Dame Joan should fall a-saying the Romaunt?”

      “But God heareth us, and conceiveth us, Madam,” said Maude timidly, “and Dame Agnes no doth.”

      “Truth, my maid. Therein faileth my parable. But setting this aside, tell me—how shall the Credo give to wit thy need?”

      Maude cogitated for a minute in silence. Then she answered—

      “No shall it, Madam.”

      “Then wherefore not speak thy lack straightway?”

      Maude was silent, but not because she was stupid.

      “My maid, what saith the Credo? When thus thou prayest, dost thou aught save look up to Heaven, and say, ‘God, I believe in Thee’? So far as it goeth, good. But seest not that an’ thou shouldst say to me, ‘Madam, I crede and trust you,’ thou shouldst have asked nought from me—have neither confessed need, ne presented petition? The Credo is matter said to men—not to God. Were it not better to say, ‘Lord, I love Thee?’ Or best of all, ‘Lord, love Thou me?’ ”

      “I wis, Madam, that our Lord loveth the saints,” said Maude in a low voice.

      She felt very much in the condition graphically described by John Bunyan as “tumbled up and down in one’s mind.”

      “Ah, child!” was the Countess’s answer, “they be lost sheep whom Christ seeketh. And whoso Christ setteth out to seek shall, sooner or later, find the way to Him.”

      Note 1. Harl. Ms. 4016, folios 1, 2.

      Note 2. The “Holy Grail” was one of the most singular of Romish superstitions. A glass vessel, supported by a foot, was shown to the people as the cup in which Christ gave the wine to His disciples at the Last Supper; and they were taught, not only that Joseph of Arimathea had caught the blood from His side in the same vessel, but that he and Mary Magdalene, sailing on Joseph’s shirt, had brought over the relic from Palestine to Glastonbury. “The Quest of the Saint Graal” was the highest achievement of the Knights of the Round Table.

Chapter Four.

       Table of Contents

      In the Scriptorium.

      “There are days of deepest sorrow

       In the season of our life;

       There are wild, despairing moments,

       There are hours of mental strife;

       There are times of stony anguish,

       When the tears refuse to fall;

       But the waiting time, my brothers,

       Is the hardest time of all.”

       Sarah Doudney.

      Beside a Gothic window, and under a groined stone roof, that afternoon sat a monk at his work. The work was illumination. The room was bare of all kinds of furniture, with the exception of a wooden erection which was chair and desk in one. On the desk lay a large square piece of parchment, a future leaf of a book, in which the text was already written, but the illuminated border was not yet begun. There was a pen in the monk’s hand, with which he was about to execute the outline; but the pen was dry, and the old man’s eyes were fixed dreamily upon the landscape without.

      “ ‘In wisdom hast Thou made them all,’ ” he murmured half audibly. “O Lord, ‘the earth is full of Thy riches!’ ”

      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 passing the sweetest here, kept for that undefouled company which shall sue the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. And could any joy pass 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 fictitious 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

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