THE GATHERING OF BROTHER HILARIUS

By MICHAEL FAIRLESS AUTHOR OF “THE ROADMENDER”

LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 1912

p. vA. M. D. G.

“To those dearworthy ones to whom I owe all; I give that which is theirs already.”

p. viPREFACE

Through this little book runs the road of life, the common road of men, the white highway that Hilarius watched from the monastery gate and Brother Ambrose saw nearing its end in the Jerusalem of his heart.

The book is a romance. It may be read as a romance of the Black Death and a monk with an artist’s eyes; but for the author it is a romance of the Image of God. While the Divine Face is being unveiled for Hilarius in the masque that shocks and bewilders him, and the secret of sorrow and sin, of death and life and love, is told by his speechless and dying “little maid,” we, if we choose, may hear again the Road mender’s epilogue to the story of the man of this earth, the man of the common highway:—“‘Dust and ashes and a house of devils,’ he cries; and there comes back for answer, ‘Rex concupiscet decorem tuum.’”

p. viiCONTENTS

PART I THE SEED

CHAP.

PAGE

I.

Blind Eyes in the Forest

3

II.

The Love of Prior Stephen

15

III.

The King’s Song-bird

22

PART II THE FLOWER

I.

The City of Pure Gold

39

II.

The City that Hilarius saw

49

III.

A Sending from the Lord

55

IV.

Blind Eyes which could see

64

V.

The White Way and where it Led

72

VI.

A Dark Finding

82

VII.

The Coming of Hunger and Love

97

p. viiiPART III THE FRUIT

I.

How Long, O Lord, How Long!

117

II.

Mary’s Lilies

124

III.

Open Eyes at the Gate

133

IV.

The Passing of Prior Stephen

141

V.

“Gabriel, Make this Man to Understand the Vision.”—Dan. viii. 16.

147

VI.

The Hunger of Dickon the Woodman

154

VII.

The Vision of the Evening and the Morning

160

VIII.

“Behold the Fields are White”

165

p. 1PART I THE SEED

p. 3CHAPTER I BLIND EYES IN THE FOREST

Hilarius stood at the Monastery gate, looking away down the smooth, well-kept road to the highway beyond. It lay quiet and serene in the June sunshine, the white way to the outer world, and not even a dust cloud on the horizon promised the approach of the train of sumpter mules laden with meats for the bellies and cloth for the backs of the good Brethren within. The Cellarer lacked wine, the drug stores in the farmery were running low; last, but not least, the Precentor had bespoken precious p. 4colours, rich gold, costly vellum, and on these the thoughts of Hilarius tarried with anxious expectation.

On his left lay the forest, home of his longing imaginings. The Monastery wall crept up one side of it, and over the top the great trees peered and beckoned with their tossing, feathery branches. Twice had Hilarius walked there, attending the Prior as he paced slowly and silently along the mossy ways, under the strong, springing pines; and the occasions were stored in his memory with the glories of St Benedict’s Day and Our Lady’s Festivals. Away to the right, within the great enclosure, stretched the Monastery lands, fair to the eye, with orchard and fruitful field, teeming with glad, unhurried labour.

At a little elevation, overlooking the whole domain, rose the Priory buildings, topped by the Church, crown and heart of the place, signing the sign of the Cross over the daily life and work of the Brethren, itself the centre of that life, the object of that work, ever unfinished because love p. 5knows not how to make an end. To the monks it was a page in the history of the life of the Order, written in stone, blazoned with beauty of the world’s treasure; a page on which each generation might spell out a word, perchance add a line, to the greater glory of God and St Benedict. They were always at work on it, stretching out eager hands for the rare stuffs and precious stones devout men brought from overseas, finding a place for the best of every ordered craft; their shame an uncouth line or graceless arch, their glory each completed pinnacle and fretted spire; ever restoring, enlarging, repairing, spendthrift of money and time in the service of the House of the Lord.

The sun shone hot on grey wall and green garth; the spirit of insistent peace brooded over the place. The wheeling white pigeons circling the cloister walls cried peace; the sculptured saints in their niches over the west door gave the blessing of peace; an old, blind monk crossed the garth with the hesitating gait of habit lately acquired—on his face was great peace. It rested everywhere, p. 6this peace of prayerful service, where the clang of the blacksmith’s hammer smote the sound of the Office bell.

Hilarius, at the gate, questioned the road again and again for sign of the belated train. It was vexatious; the Prior’s lips would take a thinner line, for the mules were already some days overdue; and it was ill to keep the Prior waiting. The soft June wind swept the fragrance of Mary’s lilies across to the lad; he turned his dreamy, blue eyes from the highway to the forest. The scent of the pinewoods rushed to meet his sudden thought. Should he, dare he, break cloister, and taste the wondrous delight of an unwalled world? It were a sin, a grave sin, in a newly-made novice, cloister-bred. The sweet, pungent smell overpowered him; the trees beckoned with their long arms and slender fingers; the voice of the forest called, and Hilarius, answering, walked swiftly away, with bowed head and beating heart, between the sunburnt pine-boles.

At last he ventured to stop and look p. 7around him, his fair hair aflame in the sunlight, his eyes full of awe of this arched and pillared city of mystery and wonder.

It was very silent. Here and there a coney peeped out and fled, and a woodpecker toiled with sharp, effective stroke. Hilarius’ eyes shone as he lifted his head and caught sight of the sunlit blue between the great, green-fringed branches: it was as if Our Lady trailed her gracious robe across the tree-tops. Then, as he bathed his thirsty soul in the great sea of light and shade, cool depths and shifting colours, the sense of his wrong-doing slipped from him, and joy replaced it—joy so great that his heart ached with it. He went on his way, singing Lauda Syon, his eyes following the pine-boles, and presently, coming out into an open glade, halted in amazement.

A flower incarnate stood before him; stood—nay, danced in the wind. Over the sunny sward two little scarlet-clad feet chased each other in rhythmic maze; dainty little brown hands spread the folds of the deep blue skirt; a bodice, silver-laced, p. 8served as stalk, on which balanced, lightly swaying, the flower of flowers itself. Hilarius’ eyes travelled upwards and rested there. Cheeks like a sunburnt peach, lips, a scarlet bow; shimmering, tender, laughing grey eyes curtained by long curling lashes; soft tendrils of curly hair, blue black in the shadows, hiding the low level brow. A sight for gods, but not for monks; above all, not for untutored novices such as Hilarius.

His sin had found him out; it was the Devil, the lovely lady of St Benedict; he drew breath and crossed himself hastily with a murmured “Apage Sataas!”

The dancer stopped, conscious perhaps of a chill in the wind.

“O what a pretty boy!” she cried gaily. “Playing truant, I dare wager. Come and dance!”

Hilarius crimsoned with shame and horror. “Woman,” he said, and his voice trembled somewhat, “art thou not shamed to deck thyself in this devil’s guise?”

The dancer bit her lip and stamped her little red shoe angrily.

p. 9“No more devil’s guise than thine own,” she retorted, eyeing his semi-monastic garb with scant favour. “Can a poor maid not practise her steps in the heart of a forest, but a cloister-bred youngster must cry devil’s guise?”

As she spoke her anger vanished like a summer cloud, and she broke into peal on peal of joyous laughter. “Poor lad, with thy talk of devils; hast thou never looked a maid in the eyes before?”

Shrewdly hit, mistress; never before has Hilarius looked a maid in the eyes, and now he drops his own.

“Dost thou not know it is sin to deck the body thus, and entice men’s souls to their undoing?”

“An what is the matter with my poor body, may it please you, kind sir?” she asked demurely, and stood with downcast eyes, like a scolded child.

“It is wrong to deck the body,” began Hilarius, softening at her attitude, “because, because—”

Again the merry laugh rang out.

p. 10“Because, because—nay, Father” (with a mock reverence), “methinks thy sermon is not ready; let it simmer awhile, and I will catechise. How old art thou?” She held up her small finger admonishingly.

“Seventeen,” replied Hilarius, surprised into reply.

“Art thou a monk?”

“Nay, a novice only.”

“Hast thou ever loved?”

Hilarius threw up his hands in shocked indignation, but she went on unconcerned—

“’Twas a foolish question; the answer’s writ large for any maid to read. But tell me, why art thou angry at the thought of love?”

Hilarius felt the ground slipping from under his feet.

“There is an evil love, and a holy love; it is good to love God and the Saints and the Brethren—”

“But not the sisters?” the wicked little laugh pealed out. “Poor sisters! Why, boy, the world is full of love, and not all for p. 11the Saints and the Brethren, and it is good—good—good!” She opened her arms wide. “’Tis the devil and the monks who call it evil. Hast thou never seen the birds mate in the springtime, nor heard the nightingale sing?”

“It is well for a husband to love his wife, and a mother her child. That is love in measure, but not so high as the love we bear to God and the Saints!” quoth Hilarius sententiously, mindful of yesterday’s homily in the Frater.

“But how can’st thou know that thou lovest the Saints?” the dancer persisted.

How did he know?

“How dost thou know that thou lovest thy mother?” he cried triumphantly, forgetting the reprobate nature of the catechist, and anxious only to come well out of the wordy war.

But the unexpected happened.

“Dost thou dare speak to me of my mother? I, love her?—I hate her;” and she flung herself down on the grass in a passion of weeping.

p. 12Even a master of theology is helpless before a woman’s tears.

“Maid, maid,” said Hilarius, in deep distress, “indeed I did not mean to vex thee;” and he came up and laid his hand on her shoulder.

So successfully can the Prince of Darkness simulate grief!

The dancer sat up and brushed away her tears; she looked fairer and more flowerlike than before, sitting on the green sward, looking up at him through shining lashes.

“There, boy, ’tis naught. How could’st thou know? But what of thine own mother?”

“I know not.”

“Nay, what is this? And thy father?”

“He was a gentle knight who died in battle ere I knew him. I came a little child to the Monastery, and know no other place.”

“Ah,”—vindictively,—“then thy mother may have been a light o’ love.”

“Light of love; it has a wondrous fair sound,” said Hilarius with a smile.

p. 13The maid looked at him speechless.

“Go home, Boy,” she said at last emphatically.

Just then a lad, a tumbler by his dress, pushed a way through the undergrowth, and stood grinning at the pair.

“So, Gia!” he said. “We must make haste; the others wait.”

“’Tis my brother,” said the dancer, “and”—pointing to the bag slung across the youth’s shoulder—“I trust he hath a fine fat hen from thy Monastery for our meal.”

Hilarius broke into a cold sweat.

The Convent’s hens! The Saints preserve us! Was nothing sacred, and were the Ten Commandments written solely for use in the Monasteries?

“’Tis stealing,” he said feebly.

“’Tis stealing,” the dancer mocked. “Hast thou another sermon ready, Sir Preacher?”

“Empty bellies make light fingers,” quoth the youth. “Did’st thou ever hunger, master?”

“There is the fast of Lent which presses somewhat,” said Hilarius.

p. 14“But ever a meal certain once in the day?” queried the girl.

“Ay, surely, and collation also; and Sunday is no fast.”

The mischievous apes laughed—how they laughed!

“So, good Preacher,” said the dancer at last, rising to her feet, “thou dost know it is wrong to steal; but hast never felt hunger. Thou dost know it is wrong to love any but God, the Saints, and thy mother; but thou hast never known a mother, nor felt what it was to love. Blind eyes! Blind eyes! the very forest could teach thee these things an thou would’st learn. Farewell, good novice, back to thy Saints and thy nursery; for me the wide wide world; hunger and love—love—love!”

She seized her brother’s hand and together they danced away like two bright butterflies among the trees.

Hilarius stared after them until they disappeared, and then with dazed eyes and drooping head took his way back to the p. 15Monastery. The train of mules had just arrived; all was stir, bustle, and explanation; and in the thick of it he slipped in unseen, unquestioned; but he was hardly conscious of this mercy vouchsafed him, for in his heart reigned desolation and doubt, and in his ears rang the dancer’s parting cry, “Hunger and love—love—love!”

CHAPTER II THE LOVE OF PRIOR STEPHEN

Brother Bernard, the Precentor, dealt out gold, paint and vellum with generous hand to his favourite pupil, and wondered at his downcast look.

“Methinks this gold is dull, Brother,” said Hilarius one day, fretfully, to his old master.

And again—

“’Tis very poor vermilion.”

The Brother looked at him enquiry.

p. 16“Nay, nay, boy; ’tis thine eyes at fault; naught ails the colours.”

Later, the Precentor came to look at the delicate border Hilarius was setting to the page of the Nativity of Our Lady.

“Now may God be good to us!” he cried with uplifted hands. “Since when did man paint the Blessed Mother with grey eyes and black hair—curly too, i’ faith?”

Hilarius crimsoned, he was weary of limning ever with blue and gold, he faltered.

It was the same in chapel. The insistent question pursued him through chant and psalm. Did he really love the Saints—St Benedict, St Scholastica, St Bernard, St Hilary? The names left him untouched; but his lips quivered as he thought of the great love between the holy brother and sister of his Order. If he had had a sister would they have loved like that?

The Saints’ Days came and went, and he scourged himself with the repeated question, kneeling with burning cheeks, and eyes from which tears were not p. 17absent, in the Chapel of the Great Mother. “Light of Love,” the girl had called his mother; what more beautiful name could he find for the Queen of Saints herself? So he prayed in his simplicity:—“Great Light of Love, Mother of my mother, grant love, love, love, to thy poor sinful son!”

The question came in his daily life.

Did he love the Prior? He feared him; and his voice was for Hilarius as the voice of God Himself. Brother John? He feared him too; Brother John’s tongue was a thing to fear. Brother Richard, old, half-blind? Surely he loved Brother Richard?—sad, helpless, and lonely, by reason of his infirmities—or was it only pity he felt for him?

Nay, let be; he loved them all. The Monastery was his home, the Prior his father, the monks his brethren; why heed the wild words of the witch in the forest? And yet what was it she had said? “For me the wide world, hunger, and love—love—love!”

p. 18He wandered in the Monastery garden and was troubled by its beauties. Two sulphur butterflies sported around the tall white lilies at the farmery door. Did they love?

He watched the sparrows at their second nesting, full of business and cheerful bickerings. Did they love?

She had said the answer was writ large for him to see: he wandered staring, wide-eyed but sightless.

At last in his sore distress he turned to the Prior, as the ship-wrecked mariner turns to the sea-girt rock that towers serene and unhurt above the devouring waves.

The Prior heard him patiently, with here and there a shrewd question. When the halting tale was told he mused awhile, his stern blue eyes grew tender, and a little smile troubled the firm line of his mouth.

“My son,” he said at length, “thou art in the wrong school; nursery, was it the maid said? A shrewd lass and welcome to the hen. Thou art a limner at heart—Brother Bernard tells of thy wondrous p. 19skill with the brush—and to be limner thou must learn to hunger and to love as the maid said. Ay, boy, and to be monk too, though alack, men gainsay it.”

“Father,” said Hilarius, waxing bold from excessive need, “did’st thou ever love as the maid meant?”

“Ay, boy—thy mother.”

There was a long silence. Then the boy said timidly:—

“The maid said she might be light of love; ’tis a beautiful thought.”

The Prior started, and looked at him curiously:—

“What didst thou tell the maid?”

“That I never knew her, but that my father was a gentle knight who died ere I saw him; and then the maid said perchance my mother was light of love.”

“Boy,” said the Prior gravely, “’tis a weary tale, and sad of telling. Thy mother was wondrous fair without, but she reckoned love lightly, nay, knew it not for the holy thing it is, but thought only of bodily lusts. Pray for her soul”—p. 20his voice grew stern—“as for one of those upon whom God, in His great pity, may have mercy. Thus have I prayed these many years.”

Hilarius looked at him in wide-eyed horror:—

“She was evil, wicked, my mother?”

“Ay—a light woman, that was what the maid meant.”

Then great darkness fell upon the soul of Hilarius, and he clasped the Prior’s knees weeping and praying like a little child.

“And so, my son,” said the Prior, “for a time thou shalt go out into the world, to strive and fail, hunger and love; only have a care that thou art chaste in heart and life; for it is the pure shall see God, and seeing love Him. Leave me now that. I may set in order thy going; and send the Chamberlain hither to me.”

That night Hilarius knelt through the long hours at the great Rood, and then at St Mary Maudlin’s altar he did penance for his dead mother’s sin.

p. 21A week later he left the Monastery as a bird leaves its nest, nay, is pushed out by the far-seeing parent bird, full of vague terrors of the great world without. He had a purse for his immediate needs; a letter to a great knight, Sir John Maltravers, who would be his patron; and another to the Prior’s good friend, the Abbat of St Alban’s. The Convent bade him a sad farewell, for they loved this gentle lad who had been with them from a little child; and Brother Richard strained his filmy eyes to look his last at the young face he would never see again.

The Prior gave him the Communion; and later walked beside him to the gates. Then as Hilarius knelt he blessed him; and the boy, overmastered by nameless fear, sprang up and prayed that he might stay and learn some other way, however hard. The Prior shook his head.

“Nay, my son, so it must be; else how shall I answer to the Master for this most precious lamb of my flock? Come back to us—an thou can’st—let no fear deter thee; p. 22only take heed, when thine eyes are opened and the great gifts of hunger and love are vouchsafed thee, to keep still the faithful heart of a little child.”

Then he bade him go; and Hilarius, for the pull of his heart-strings, must needs run hot-foot down the broad forest road and along the highway, without daring to look back, and so out into the wide, wide world.

CHAPTER III THE KING’S SONG-BIRD

Martin the Minstrel sat under a wayside oak singing softly to himself as he tuned his vielle. He was a long lanky fellow with straight black locks flat against his sallow face, and dark eyes that smouldered in hollow cavities. He wore the King’s colours, and broke a manchet of white bread with his mid-day repast.