Part 31 (1/2)

'I a.s.sure you that your gallant permission is unnecessary. I am beginning, at least, to believe that there is a Father in Heaven who educates His children; and I have no wish to interfere with His methods. Let my cousin go his way . . . he will learn something which he wanted, I doubt not, on his present path, even as I shall on mine. ”Se tu segui la tua stella” is my motto. . . . Let it be his too, wherever the star may guide him. If it be a will-o'-the- wisp, and lead to the mora.s.s, he will only learn how to avoid mora.s.ses better for the future.'

'Ave Maris stella! It is the star of Bethlehem which he follows . .

. the star of Mary, immaculate, all-loving!' . . . And he bowed his head reverently. 'Would that you, too, would submit yourself to that guidance! . . . You, too, would seem to want some loving heart whereon to rest.' . . .

Lancelot sighed. 'I am not a child, but a man; I want not a mother to pet, but a man to rule me.'

Slowly his companion raised his thin hand, and pointed to the crucifix, which stood at the other end of the apartment.

'Behold him!' and he bowed his head once more . . . and Lancelot, he knew not why, did the same . . . and yet in an instant he threw his head up proudly, and answered with George Fox's old reply to the Puritans,--

'I want a live Christ, not a dead one. . . . That is n.o.ble . . .

beautiful . . . it may be true. . . . But it has no message for me.'

'He died for you.'

'I care for the world, and not myself.'

'He died for the world.'

'And has deserted it, as folks say now, and become--an absentee, performing His work by deputies. . . . Do not start; the blasphemy is not mine, but those who preach it. No wonder that the owners of the soil think it no shame to desert their estates, when preachers tell them that He to whom they say, all power is given in heaven and earth, has deserted His.'

'What would you have, my dear sir?' asked the father.

'What the Jews had. A king of my nation, and of the hearts of my nation, who would teach soldiers, artists, craftsmen, statesmen, poets, priests, if priests there must be. I want a human lord, who understands me and the millions round me, pities us, teaches us, orders our history, civilisation, development for us. I come to you, full of manhood, and you send me to a woman. I go to the Protestants, full of desires to right the world--and they begin to talk of the next life, and give up this as lost!'

A quiet smile lighted up the thin wan face, full of unfathomable thoughts; and he replied, again half to himself,--

'Am I G.o.d, to kill or to make alive, that thou sendest to me to recover a man of his leprosy? Farewell. You shall see your cousin here at noon to-morrow. You will not refuse my blessing, or my prayers, even though they be offered to a mother?'

'I will refuse nothing in the form of human love.' And the father blessed him fervently, and he went out. . . .

'What a man!' said he to himself, 'or rather the wreck of what a man! Oh, for such a heart, with the thews and sinews of a truly English brain!'

Next day he met Luke in that room. Their talk was short and sad.

Luke was on the point of entering an order devoted especially to the wors.h.i.+p of the Blessed Virgin.

'My father has cast me out . . . I must go to her feet. She will have mercy, though man has none.'

'But why enter the order? Why take an irrevocable step?'

'Because it is irrevocable; because I shall enter an utterly new life, in which old things shall pa.s.s away, and all things become new, and I shall forget the very names of Parent, Englishman, Citizen,--the very existence of that strange Babel of man's building, whose roar and moan oppress me every time I walk the street. Oh, for solitude, meditation, penance! Oh, to make up by bitter self-punishment my ingrat.i.tude to her who has been leading me unseen, for years, home to her bosom!--The all-prevailing mother, daughter of Gabriel, spouse of Deity, flower of the earth, whom I have so long despised! Oh, to follow the example of the blessed Mary of Oignies, who every day inflicted on her most holy person eleven hundred stripes in honour of that all-perfect maiden!'

'Such an honour, I could have thought, would have pleased better Kali, the murder-G.o.ddess of the Thugs,' thought Lancelot to himself; but he had not the heart to say it, and he only replied,--

'So torture propitiates the Virgin? That explains the strange story I read lately, of her having appeared in the Cevennes, and informed the peasantry that she had sent the potato disease on account of their neglecting her shrines; that unless they repented, she would next year destroy their cattle; and the third year, themselves.'

'Why not?' asked poor Luke.

'Why not, indeed? If G.o.d is to be capricious, proud, revengeful, why not the Son of G.o.d? And if the Son of G.o.d, why not His mother?'