The Well in the Desert | Page 9

had, Lady," answered the monk.
"But how to ask?--whom to ask? There may be the Well, but where is the way?"
"How to ask, Lady? As I asked you but now for that lower, poorer water, whereof whosoever drinketh shall thirst again. Whom to ask? Be there more Gods in Heaven than one? Ask the Master, not the servants. And where is the way? It was made on the red rood, thirteen hundred years ago, when `one of the soldiers with a spear pierced His side, and forthwith came thereout blood and water.' Over that stream of blood is the way to the Well of Living Water."
"I do not fully understand you," returned Philippa.
"You look weary, Lady," said the monk, changing his tone.
"I am weary," she answered; "wearier than you--in one sense."
"Ay, wearier than I," he replied; "for I have been to the Well, and have found rest."
"Are you a priest?" asked Philippa suddenly.
The monk nodded.
"Then come in hither and rest, and let me confess to you. I fancy you might tell me what would help me."
The monk silently obeyed, and followed her to the house. An hour later he sat in Philippa's bower, and she knelt before him.
"Father," she said, at the close of her tale, "I have never known rest nor love. All my life I have been a lonely, neglected woman. Is there any balm-tree by your Well for such wounds as mine?--any healing virtue in its waters that could comfort me?"
"Have you never injured or neglected any, daughter?" asked the monk quietly.
"Never!" she said, almost indignantly.
"I cannot hold with you there," he replied.
"Whom have I ever injured?" exclaimed Philippa, half angrily, half amazed.
"Listen," said he, "and I will tell you of One whom all your life you have injured and neglected--God."
Philippa's protestations died on her lips. She had not expected to hear such words as these.
"Nay, heed not my words," he pursued gently. "Your own lips shall bring you in guilty. Have you loved God with all your mind, and heart, and soul, and strength? Hath He been in all your thoughts?"
Philippa felt instinctively that the monk spoke truly. She had not loved God, she had not even wished to love Him. Her conscience cried to her, "Unclean!" yet she was too proud to acknowledge it. She felt angry, not with herself, but with him. She thought he "rubbed the sore, when he should bring the plaster." Comfort she had asked, and condemnation he was giving her instead.
"Father!" she said, in mingled sadness and vexation, "you deal me hard measure."
"My daughter," answered the monk very gently, "the pitcher must be voided ere it can be filled. If you go to the Well with your vessel full of the water of earth, there will be no room there for the Living Water."
"Is it only for saints, then?" she asked in a disappointed tone.
"It is only for sinners," answered he: "and according to your own belief, you are not a sinner. The Living Water is not wasted on pitchers that have been filled already at other cisterns, `I will give unto him that is athirst'--but to him only--`of the Fountain of the Water of Life, freely.'"
"But tell me, in plain words, what is that Water of Life?"
"The Holy Spirit of God."
Philippa's next question was not so wide of the mark as it seemed.
"Are you a true Dominican?"
"I am one of the Order of Predicant Friars."
"From what house?"
"From Ashridge."
"Who sent you forth to preach?"
"God."
"Ah! yes, but I mean, what bishop or abbot?"
"Is the seal of the servant worth more than that of the Master?"
"I would know, Father," urged Philippa.
The monk smiled. "Archbishop Bradwardine," he said.
"Then Ashridge is a Dominican house? I know not that vicinage."
"Men give us another name," responded the monk slowly, "which I see you would know. Be it so. They call us--Boni-Homines."
"But I thought," said Philippa, looking bewilderedly into his face, "I thought those were very evil men. And Archbishop Bradwardine was a very holy man--almost a saint."
A faint ironical smile flitted for a moment over the monk's grave lips. The gravity was again unbroken the next instant.
"A very holy man," he repeated. "He walked with God; and he is not, for God took him. Ay, took him away from the evil to come, where he should vex his righteous soul no more by unlawful deeds--where the alloyed gold of worldly greatness, which men would needs braid over the pure ermine of his life, should soil and crush it no more."
He spoke rather to himself than to Philippa: and his eyes had a far-away look in them, as he lifted his head and gazed from the window over the moorland.
"Then what are the Boni-Homines?" inquired Lady Sergeaux.
"A few sinners," answered the monk, "whose hearts God hath touched, that they have sought and found that Well of the Living