- 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.
