Gathering of Brother Hilarius | Page 3

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.
Even 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.
The 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.
"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 Monastery. 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.
"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