Chapter 7

Once as they were swept along in near peril of wreck, through flying sea-smoke and plagues of hail, they heard a strange unearthly music rising and falling in the blast. Some said it was Angels sent to strengthen them; others said it was wild birds which they had seen flying past in flocks; but Serapion said, "If it be Angels, blessed be God; if it be birds, yet even they are God's Angels, lessoning us how we shall praise Him, and sing Him a new song from the ends of the earth." Then he raised his voice, singing the psalm

_Laudate Dominum de caelis,_ _Praise ye the Lord from the heavens: praise Him in the heights,_

and the Sea-farers sang it with earnest voices and with hearts lifted up, and they were greatly encouraged.

It was in these latitudes stormy and cold that, to their thinking, the Sea-farers won nearest to the Earthly Paradise. For, far in the sides of the north as, in the red sunlight, they coasted a lofty land white with snow-fields and blue with glacier ice, they entered a winding fjord, and found themselves in glassy water slumbering between green slopes of summer.

Down to the water's edge the shores were wooded with copses of dwarf birch and willow, and the slopes were radiant with wild flowers--harebell and yellow crowfoot, purple heath and pink azalea and starry saxifrage. A rosy light tinged the snow on the wintry heights; and over the edge of a cliff, far up the fjord, a glacier hung, and from beneath the ice a jet of water burst forth and fell foaming down the precipice to the shore. When they landed they found the ground covered thick with berries dark and luscious, and while they gathered these, a black and white snow-bunting flitted about them on its long wings.

A miraculous thing was this garden of summer in the icy bosom of winter, but a greater marvel still was the undying sunshine on sea and shore.

"In very truth," said Serapion, "of all places we have yet seen is not this most like to have been the blessed land, for is not even 'the night light about us,' and is it not with us as it is written of the Heavenly Jerusalem, 'there shall be no night there'?"

The Sea-farers took away with them many of the leaves and flowers of this country, and afterwards the scribes in the Scriptorium copied them in beautiful colours in the Golden Missal of the Abbey.

This was the last of the unknown shores visited by the Sea-farers. Seven years had they pursued their seeking, and there now grew on them so strong a craving for home that they could gainsay it no longer. Wherefore it fell out that in the autumn-tide, when the stubble is brown in the fields and the apple red on the bough; on the last day of the week, when toil comes to end; in the last light of the day, when the smoke curls up from the roof, they won their long sea-way home.

O beloved Abbey of the Holy Face, through tears they beheld thy walls, with rapture they kissed thy threshold!

"In all the great sea of ocean," said Serapion, when he had told the story of their wandering, "no such Earthly Paradise have we seen as this dear Abbey of our own!"

"Dear brethren," said the Abbot, "the seven years of your seeking have not been wasted if you have truly learned so much. Far from home have I never gone, but many things have come to me. To be ever, and to be tranquilly, and to be joyously, and to be strenuously, and to be thankfully and humbly at one with the blessed will of God--that is the Heavenly Paradise; and each of us, by God's grace, may have that within him. And whoso hath within him the Heavenly Paradise, hath here and now, and at all times and in every place, the true Earthly Paradise round about him."

Here ends the chapter of the Seven Years of Seeking.

["But do Thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us," chanted the Lector, as he closed the book. And the Prior struck the board, and the brethren arose and returned God thanks for the creatures of food and drink, and for that Earthly Paradise, ever at their door, of tranquil and joyous and strenuous and thankful and humble acceptance of God's will.]

The Guardians of the Door

There was once an orphan girl, far away in a little village on the edge of the moors. She lived in a hovel thatched with reeds, and this was the poorest and the last of all the houses, and stood quite by itself among broom and whins by the wayside.

From the doorway the girl could look across the wild stretches of the moorland; and that was pleasant enough on a summer day, for then the air is clear and golden, and the moor is purple with the bloom of the ling, and there are red and yellow patches of bracken, and here and there a rowan tree grows among the big grey boulders with clusters of reddening berries. But at night, and especially on a winter night, the darkness was so wide and so lonely that it was hard not to feel afraid sometimes. The wind, when it blew in the dark, was full of strange and mournful voices; and when there was no wind, Mary could hear the cries and calls of the wild creatures on the moor.

Mary was fourteen when she lost her father. He was a rough idle good-for-nothing, and one stormy night on his way home from the tavern he went astray and was found dead in the snow. Her mother had died when she was so small a child that Mary could scarcely remember her face. So it happened that she was left alone in the world, and all she possessed was a dog, some fowls, and her mother's spinning wheel.

But she was a bright, cheerful, courageous child, and soon she got from the people of the village sufficient work to keep her wheel always busy, for no one could look into her face without liking her. People often wondered how so rude and worthless a fellow could have had such a child; she was as sweet and unexpected as the white flowers on the bare and rugged branches of the blackthorn.

Her hens laid well, and she sold all the eggs she could spare; and her dog, which had been trained in all sorts of cunning by her father, often brought her from the moors some wild thing in fur or feathers which Mary thought there was no harm in cooking.

Her father had been too idle and careless to teach her anything, and all that she could recollect of her mother's instruction was a little rhyme which she used to repeat on her knees beside the bed every night before she went to sleep.

And this was the rhyme:

_God bless this house from thatch to floor,_ _The twelve Apostles guard the door,_ _And four good Angels watch my bed,_ _Two at the foot and two the head._ _Amen._

Though she was all alone in the world, and had no girl of her own age to make friends with, she was happy and contented, for she was busy from morning till night.

And yet in spite of all this, strange stories began to be whispered about the village. People who happened to pass by the old hut late at night declared that they had seen light shining through the chinks in the window-shutter when all honest people should have been asleep. There were others who said they had noticed strange men standing in the shadows of the eaves; they might have been highwaymen, they might have been smugglers--they could not tell, for no one had cared to run the risk of going too near--but it was quite certain that there were strange things going on at the hut, and that the girl who seemed so simple and innocent was not quite so good as the neighbours had imagined.

When the village gossip had reached the ears of the white-headed old Vicar, he sent for the girl and questioned her closely. Mary was grieved to learn that such untrue and unkind stories were told about her. She knew nothing, she said, of any lights or of any men. As soon as it was too dusky to see to work she always fastened her door, and after she had had her supper, she covered the fire and blew out the rushlight and went to bed.

"And you say your prayers, my daughter, I hope?" said the Vicar kindly.

Mary hung down her head and answered in a low voice, "I do not know any proper prayers, but I always say the words my mother taught me."

And Mary repeated the rhyme:

_God bless this house from thatch to floor,_ _The twelve Apostles guard the door,_ _And four good Angels watch my bed,_ _Two at the foot and two the head._ _Amen._

"There could not be a better prayer, dear child!" rejoined the Vicar, with a smile. "Go home now, and do not be troubled by what idle tongues may say. Every night repeat your little prayer, and God will take care of you."

Late that night, however, the Vicar lit his lantern and went out of doors, without a word to any one. All the village was still and dark as he walked slowly up the road towards the moor.

"She is a good girl," he said to himself, "but people may have observed something which has given rise to these stories. I will go and see with my own eyes."

The stars were shining far away in the dark sky, and the green plovers were crying mournfully on the dark moor. As he passed along the lantern swung out a dim light across the road, which had neither walls nor hedges.

"It is a lonely place for a child to live in by herself," he thought.

At last he perceived the outline of the old hovel, among the gorse and broom, and the next moment he stopped suddenly, for there, as he had been told, a thread of bright light came streaming through the shutters of the small window. He drew his lantern under his cloak, and approached cautiously. The road where he stood was now dim, but by the faint glimmer of the stars he was able to make out that there were several persons standing under the eaves, and apparently whispering together.

The Vicar's good old heart was filled with surprise and sorrow. Then it suddenly grew hot with anger, and throwing aside his cloak and lifting up the lantern he advanced boldly to confront the intruders. But they were not at all alarmed, and they did not make any attempt to escape him. Then, as the light fell upon their forms and faces, who but the Vicar was struck with awe and amazement, and stood gazing as still as a stone!

The people under the eaves were men of another age and another world, strangely clothed in long garments, and majestic in appearance. One carried a lance, and another a pilgrim's staff, and a third a battle-axe; but the most imposing stood near the door of the hut, and in his hand he held two large keys.

In an instant the Vicar had guessed who they were, and had uncovered his head and fallen on his knees; but the strangers melted slowly away into the darkness, as if they had been no more than the images of a dream. And indeed the Vicar might have thought that he really had been dreaming but for the light which continued to stream through the chink in the shutter.

He arose from his knees and moved towards the window to peep into the hut. Instantly an invisible hand stretched a naked sword across his path, and a low deep voice spoke to him in solemn warning:

"It is the light of Angels. Do not look, or blindness will fall upon you, even as it fell upon me on the Damascus road."

But the aged Vicar laid his hand on the sword, and tried to move it away.

"Let me look, let me look!" he said; "better one glimpse of the Angels than a thousand years of earthly sight."

Then the sword yielded to his touch and vanished into air, and the old priest leaned forward on the window-sill and gazed through the chink. And with a cry of joy he saw a corner of the rude bed, and beside the corner, one above the other, three great dazzling wings; they were the left-hand side wings of one of the Angels at the foot of the bed.

Then all was deep darkness.

The Vicar thought that it was the blindness that had fallen upon him, but the only regret he felt was that the vision had vanished so quickly. Then, as he turned away, he found that not only had he not lost his sight, but that he could now see with a marvellous clearness. He saw the road, and even the foot-prints and grains of sand on the road; the hut, and the reeds on the hut; the moor, and the boulders and the rowan-trees on the moor. Everything was as distinct as if it had been--not daylight, but as if the air were of the clear colour of a nut-brown brook in summer.

Praising God for all His goodness he returned home, and as he went he looked back once and again and yet again, and each time he saw the twelve awful figures in strange clothing, guarding the lonely thatched hovel on the edge of the moor.

After this there were no more stories told of Mary, and no one even dared speak to her of the wonderful manner in which her prayer was answered, so that she never knew what the old Vicar had seen. But late at night people would rather go a great way round than take the road which passed by her poor hut.

On the Shores of Longing

It was in the old forgotten days when all the western coast of Spain was sprinkled with lonely hermitages among the rocks, and with holy houses and towers of prayer; and this west coast was thought to be the last and outermost edge of all land, for beyond there lay nothing but the vast ocean stream and the sunset. There, in the west of the world, on the brink of the sea and the lights of the day that is done, lived the men of God, looking for ever towards the east for the coming of the Lord. Even the dead were laid in the place of their resurrection with their feet pointing to the morning, so that when they should arise their faces would be turned towards His coming. Thus it came to pass that the keen white wind out of the east was named the wind of the dead men's feet.

Now in one or these holy houses lived the monk Bresal of the Songs, who had followed Sedulius the Bishop into Spain.

Bresal had been sent thither to teach the brethren the music of the choirs of the Isle of the Gael and to train the novices in chant and psalmody, for of all singers the sweetest was he, and he could play on every instrument of wind or string, and was skilled in all the modes of minstrelsy. Thereto he knew by heart numberless hymns and songs and poems, and God had given him the gift to make songs and hymns, and beautiful airs for the singing of them. And for these things, so sweet and gentle was the nature of the man, he was greatly beloved whithersoever he fared.

A happy and holy life had he lived, but now he was growing old; and as he looked from the convent on the cliffs far over the western waters, he thought daily more and more of Erinn, and a great longing grew upon him to see once more that green isle in which he had been born. And when he saw, far below, the ships of the sea-farers dragging slowly away into the north in the breezy sunshine or in the blue twilight, his eyes became dim with the thought that perchance these wind-reddened mariners might be steering for the shores of his longing.

The Prior of the convent noticed his sadness and questioned him of the cause, and when Bresal told him, "Why should you go?" he asked. "Do you not love us any longer?"

"Dearly do I love you, father," replied Bresal, "and dearly this house, and every rock and tree and flower; but no son of the Isle of the Gael forgets the little mother-lap of earth whereon he was nursed, or the smell of the burning peat, or the song of the robin, or the drone of the big mottled wild bee, or the cry of the wild geese when the winter is nigh. Even Columba the holy pined for the lack of these things. This is what he says in one of the songs which he has left us:

_There's an eye of grey_ _Looks back to Erinn far away;_ _Big tears wet that eye of grey_ _Seeking Erinn far away."_

Now the Prior loved Bresal as Jonathan loved David; and though it grieved him to part with him, he resolved that if it could be compassed Bresal should go back to his own country. "But you must never forget us, and when you are happy, far away from us, you must think of us and give us your heart in prayer."

"Never shall I forget you, father," the Singer replied. "Indeed, it will not be a strange thing if I shall long for you then even as I am longing for my home now; for in truth, next to my home, most do I love the brethren of this house, and the very house itself, and the hills and the sea and the dying lights of the evening. But I know that it will not be permitted me ever to return. The place of my birth will be the place of my resurrection."

The Prior smiled, and laid his hand gently on the monk's shoulder: "O Bresal, if it be within my power you shall have your will."

So he sent messengers to Sedulius the Bishop; and Sedulius, who also had the Irish heart with its tears of longing, consented; and not many days after the swallows and martins had gone flashing by into the north, Bresal of the Songs was free to follow as speedily as he might.

Long was the way and weary the pilgrimage, but at last he reached the beloved green Isle of the Gael, and fared into the south-west--and this is the land in which it is told that Patrick the Saint celebrated Mass on every seventh ridge he passed over. He came at sunset on the last day of the week to the place of bells and cells among the rocks of the coast of Kerry. In that blessed spot there is ever a service of Angels ascending and descending. And when he saw once more the turf dyke and the wattled cells and the rude stone church of the brotherhood where he had been a son of reading in his boyhood, and the land all quiet with the labour of the week done, and the woods red with the last light of the finished day, the tears ran down his face, and he fell on the earth and kissed it for joy at his return. It was a glad thing for him to be there once more; to recognise each spot he had loved, to look on the old stones and trees, the hills and sparkling sea, the rocky isle and the curraghs of the fisher-folk; to smell the reek of the peat curling up blue in the sweet air; for all these things had haunted him in dreams when he was in a distant land.

Now when the first hunger of longing had been appeased, and the year wore round, and the swallows gathered in the autumn, and every bush and tree was crowded with them while they waited restlessly for a moonlight night and a fair wind to take their flight over sea, Bresal began to think tenderly of the home on the Spanish cliffs overhanging the brink of the sunset.

Then in the brown days of the autumn rains; and again in the keen November when the leaves were falling in sudden showers--but the highest leaves clung the longest--and puffs of whirling wind set the fallen leaves flying, and these were full of sharp sounds and pattering voices; and sixes of sparrows went flying with the leaves so that one could not well say which were leaves and which were birds; and yet again through the bitter time when the eaves were hung with icicles and the peaks of the blue slieves were white with snow, and the low hills and fields were hoary--the memory of the Prior and of the beloved house prevailed with him and he felt the dull ache of separation.

As the days passed by his trouble grew the greater, for he began to fear that his love of the creature was attaching him too closely to the earth and to the things of this fleeting life of our exile. In vain he fasted and prayed and strove to subdue his affections; the human heart within him would not suffer him to rest.

Now it happened on a day when the year had turned, and a soft wind was tossing the little new leaves and the shadows of the leaves and the new grass and the shadows of the grass, Bresal was sitting on a rock in the sun on the hillside.

Suddenly there flashed by him, in a long swift joyous swing of flight, two beautiful birds with long wings and forked tails and a sheen of red and green. It was the swallows that had returned.

For a moment he felt an ascension of the heart, and then he recollected that nearly a year had elapsed since he had seen the face of his friend the Prior for the last time in this world. And he wondered to himself how they all fared, whether any one had died, what this one or that was now doing, whether they still spoke at times of him, but chiefly he thought of the Prior, and he prayed for him with a great love. And thinking thus as he sat on the rock, Bresal seemed to see once more the dear house in Spain and the cliffs overlooking the vast ocean stream, and it appeared to him as though he were once again in a favourite nook among the rocks beside the priory.

In that nook a thread of water trickled down into a hollow stone and made a little pool, and around the pool grew an ice-plant with thick round green leaves set close and notched on the edge, and a thin russet stalk, and little stars of white flowers sprinkled with red. And hard by the pool stood a small rounded evergreen tree from which he had often gathered the orange-scarlet berries. At the sight of these simple and familiar things the tears ran down Bresal's cheeks, half for joy and half for sorrow.

Now at this selfsame moment the Prior was taking the air and saying his office near that very spot, and when he had closed his breviary, he remembered his friend in Erinn far away, and murmured, "How is it, Lord, with Bresal my brother? Have him, I pray Thee, ever in Thy holy keeping."

As he spoke the gift of heavenly vision descended on the Prior, and he saw where Bresal sat on a rock in the sun gazing at the evergreen tree and the ice-plant about the little pool, and he perceived that Bresal fancied he was looking at these things.

A great tenderness for Bresal filled the Prior's heart, and he prayed: "Lord, if it be Thy holy will, let Bresal my brother have near him these things of which he is dreaming, as a remembrance of what his soul loveth." Then, turning to the tree and the plant and the pool, he blessed them and said: "O little tree and starry plant and cool well and transparent fern, and whatsoever else Bresal now sees, arise in the name of the Lord of the four winds and of earth and water and fire, arise and go and make real the dream that he is dreaming."

As he spoke the trickling water and the tree and the saxifrage, and with them parcels of soil and rock, and with the pool the blue light of the sky reflected in it, rose like a cloud and vanished, and the Prior beheld them no more.

At last Bresal brushed away his tears, blaming his weakness and his enslavement to earthly affections, but the things he had seen in his happy day-dream did not vanish. To his great amazement, there at his feet were the little pool and the ice-plant, and hard by grew the evergreen tree. He rose with a cry of joy, "O Father Prior, 'tis thy prayer hath done this!"

And care was lifted from him, for now he knew that in his human love he had in nowise sinned against the love of God, but contrariwise the love of his friend had drawn him closer to the love of his Maker. During all the days of the years of his exile this little parcel of Spain was a solace and a strength to him.

Many a hundred years has gone by since this happened, but still if you travel in that land you may see the ice-plant and the evergreen tree. And the name of the evergreen is the Strawberry Tree. The ice-plant, which is also called a saxifrage, may now be seen in many a garden to which it has been brought from the Kerry mountains, and it is known as London Pride. Botanists who do not know the story of Bresal of the Songs have been puzzled to explain how a Spanish tree and a Spanish flower happen to grow in one little nook of Erinn.

The Children of Spinalunga