_ PART I. THE SEED
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.
"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 absent, 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!"
He 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 skill 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"--his 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.
A 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; only 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. _