He unclasped his hands and laid one on my knee. I was terrified at its purity, but his face was turned away, and he said nothing.
I had never heard the wood at that time of the evening so silent as it was then. It was the time when, as the lax monks say, the birds say mattins (but the strict observants call it compline), but there was neither mattins nor compline then in the green wood. It was all in a great hush, and the shadows from the trees fifty paces away had crept up and were at our feet.
Then he spoke again.
"Tell me what your soul tells you," he said.
I put my hand on his brown head; I could not speak. Then he rose at once, and stood smiling and looking on me, and the sunlight made a splendour in his hair, as it were his heavenly crown.
"Thank you, my father," he said, though I had not spoken one word.
Then he turned and went into the hut, and left me to look upon the green woods through my tears, and to listen to a mavis that had begun to sing in one of the may-trees. I knew he was gone to make ready.
The sun had quite gone down before he came out again, and the shadows were like a veil over the land; only the yellow flowers burned hot like candle flames before me.
He had four books in his hand and a little bottle, his hat on his shoulders, and the wooden sandals on his feet that he had worn to walk in four years before when he came to us. His little linen picture of the five wounds was fastened over his breast with thorns. He carried across his arm the second white-sleeved kirtle that he had, and his burse was on his girdle. He held out two of the books to me.
"These are for you, my father," he said; "the book of hours and the _Regula Heremitarum_ I shall take with me, and all the rest of the mobills and the two other books I shall leave at our Lord"s disposal, except the bottle of Quintessence."
I took the two books and looked at them.
There was Master Hoveden"s _Philomela_, and a little book he had made on Quinte Essence.
"But you will need them!" I cried.
"I carry _Philomela_ in my heart," he said, "and as for the Quinte Essence I shall have enough if I need it, and here is the bottle that holds that that has been made of blood.--The fifth--being of gold and silver I have not. _Argentum et aurum non est mihi_." ["Silver and gold I have none." (Acts iii. 6.)]
(That was the little bottle that I have told you of before. It was distilled of his own blood, according to the method of Hermes Trismegistus.)
"If I do not return," he said, "I bequeath all to you; and I wish six ma.s.ses to be said; the first to be sung, of _Requiem_; the second of the five wounds; the third of the a.s.sumption; the fourth of all martyrs with a special memory of saint Christopher; the fifth of all confessors with a special memory of saint Anthony, hermit, and saint Giles, abbot; the sixth of all virgins with a special memory of saint Agnes."
You understand, my children, that he knew what would come to him, and that he had foreseen all; he spoke as simply as one who was going to another village only, looking away from me upon the ground. (I was glad of that.)
I begged of him to bid good-bye to his meadow.
"I will not;" he said, "I bear it with me wherever I go."
Then he took me by the arm, carrying his shod staff in his other hand, and led me to the gate, for I was so blinded that I stumbled as I went.
Once only did I speak as we pa.s.sed upwards through the dark wood.
"And what will be your message," I asked, "when you come to the King?"
"Our Lord will tell it me when I come thither," he said.
We went through the village that lay dark and fast asleep. I wished him to go to some of the houses, and bid the folks good-bye, but he would not.
"I bear them, too, wherever I go," he said.
After we had adored G.o.d Almighty in the church, [That is, G.o.d present in the Blessed Sacrament.] and I had shriven the young man and blessed him, we went out and stood under the lychgate where his body afterwards rested.
It was a clear night of stars and as silent as was once heaven for the s.p.a.ce of half-an-hour. The philomels had given over their singing near a month before, and it was not the season for stags to bray; and those, as you know, are the princ.i.p.al sounds that we hear at night.
We stood a long time listening to the silence. I knew well what was in my heart, and I knew presently what was in his. He was thinking on his soul.
He turned to me after a while, and I could see the clear pallour of his face and the line of his lips and eyes all set in his heavy hair.
"Do you know the tale of the Persian king, Sir John?"
I told him No; he had many of such tales. I do not know where he had read them.
"There was once a king who had the open eyes, and he looked into heaven and h.e.l.l. He saw there two friends whom he had known in the flesh; the one was a hermit, and the other another king. The hermit was in h.e.l.l, and the king in heaven. When he asked the reason of this, one told him that the hermit was in h.e.l.l because of his consorting with the king, and the king in heaven because of his consorting with the hermit."
I understood him, but I said nothing.
"Pray for me then, Sir John," said Master Richard.
Then we kissed one another, and he was gone without another word along the white road.
How Master Richard fared: how he heard Ma.s.s in Saint Pancras" Church: how he came to Westminster: and of his colloquy with the Ankret
_Abyssus abyssum invocat: in voce cataractarum tuarum_.
Deep calleth on deep: at the noise of Thy flood-gates.--_Ps. xli. 8._
III
The tale of his journey and of his coming to London he told me when I saw him again at the end. He spoke to me for over an hour, and I think that I have remembered near every word, but I cannot write down the laughter and the tears that were in his voice as he told me.
As he went along the road beneath the trees and the stars, carrying his kirtle, with his books and other things in his burse, and his hat on his shoulders, he was both happy and sorry.
There are two kinds of happiness for mortal men: there is that which is carnal and imperfect and hangs on circ.u.mstances and the health of the body and such like things; and there is that which is spiritual and perfect, which hangs on nothing else than the doing of the will of G.o.d Almighty so far as it is known, so that a man may have both at once, or either without the other. Master Richard had the one without the other.
At first he could not bear to think of what he had left behind him--his little quiet house and meadow and the stream where he washed, and the beasts and men that loved him; and he threw himself upon the other happiness for strength. By the time that he had arrived at the ford he was so much penetrated by this better joy that he was able to look back, and tell himself, as he had told me, that he bore with him always wherever he went all that he had left behind him. It was ever his doctrine that we lose nothing of what is good and sweet in the past, and that we suck out of all things a kind of essence that abides with us always, and that every soul that loves is a treasure-house of all that she has ever loved. It is only the souls that do not love that go empty in this world and _in saecula saeculorum_. He thought much of this on his road, and by the time that he had come so far that he thought it best to sleep by the wayside, the warmth had come back that had left him for four days.
He went aside then out of the road to find a hazel thicket, and by the special guidance of G.o.d found one with a may-tree beside it. There he groped together the dead leaves, took off his burse and his hat and his girdle and his brown habit, and laid the habit upon the leaves, unpinning the five wounds, and fastening them again upon his white kirtle. Then he knelt down by the may-tree, and said his prayers, beginning as he always did:
_"Totiens glorior, quotiens nominis tui, JESU, recordor."_ ["I glory, so often as I remember Thy Name, JESU."]
Then he repeated the Name an hundred times, and his heart grew so hot and the sweetness in his month so piercing that he could scarce go on.
Then he committed himself to the tuition of the glorious Mother of Christ, and to that of saint Christopher, saint Anthony, hermit, and saint Agnes, virgin, and lastly to that of saint Giles and saint Denis, remembering me. Then he said compline with _paternoster, avemaria_, and _credo_, signed himself with the cross, and lay down on his kirtle--_specialissimus_, darling of G.o.d--and drew the second kirtle over his body for fear of the dews and the night vapours; and so went to sleep, striving not to think of where he had slept last night. (He told me all this, as I have told you.)