The Ravens and the Angels Part 11

"_Thy will be done on earth._"

She said it, she wept it, she wept it to her Father in heaven. And softly, as from the other side of the choir, came back, as from above, the glorious antiphon--

"_As it is in heaven._"

The sob of submission came back, as it so often does, in a song of praise, from the land where the Amens are transfigured into the Hallelujahs.

"_As it is in heaven._"

"It will be all Easter there," she thought. "I shall be Inside there at last!"

When her father came back, and looked anxiously at his darling as he entered the door, her smile met him like a song of victory and welcome.

"At Easter, darling! Inside the Cathedral at Easter!"

"Yes, father," she said; "one Easter I shall be Inside."

But the hidden fount of joy, from which the smile came, he did not know.

She would not tell him, because to him, at first, she knew it must be a bitter well of tears.

Slowly she faded away.

The Cathedral, her great stone Poem, her Paradise, rose before her, and spoke to her, day and night.

But with new readings.

For she had learned that this whole visible world, with its earth and its heavens, its cities and its cathedrals, this whole transitory life, is but as the little timber Cottage nestling against the everlasting walls of the Temple whose builder and maker is G.o.d.

Day by day old Agatha grumbled over her household work, yet day by day more tenderness began to mingle with her complainings.

Day by day little Mark came, attracted irresistibly, he knew not how, by the gentle voice, although the feeble fingers could mend or make for him no more. And unconsciously he unlearned the rough lessons of the streets, and learned a loving reverence from the dying child.

And day by day the father laid the little white loaf, and the milk, and the water-jug by his darling's bed, only showing his anxiety by never missing any day now to bring some little gift of fruit to add to it, were his labour prosperous or not, taking it from his own scanty meal.

And little Marie dared not remonstrate or refuse; she knew the memory of those little sacrifices would be so precious.

Beyond this tacit understanding, the two did not confess to each other by word or look that both knew what was at hand.

Only one morning, as he was leaving home, she said to him in a faint voice, but with a bright smile, "Father, I think G.o.d has given you beautiful work to do--to carry water to those who thirst. Is it not just what His only Son, our Lord, is doing always for us? He does not stand at the fountain; He brings the water home, does He not? home to every one of us, to our very hearts."

Then she added,--

"Father, you will come back early. I think our Lord is coming to take me to the Fountains of Waters. We shall drink together one morning, father, fresh from the spring. I think I am going Inside at last."

He did not leave her again.

Days of suffering came.

But before Easter she had exchanged the little Cottage for the Cathedral. The child had entered in, and was joining in the songs of the Temple, which is the Father's house, wherein are many mansions.

And Agatha said,--

"We have had a saint with us, a saint of G.o.d,--and I did not know it!"

But she grew gentler and kinder. The Cottage where the gentle child had lived and died had grown as sacred as the Cathedral, and a hush of reverence was on it which seemed to make harsh words impossible where she had suffered and entered into rest.

Little Mark said, "My friend is gone." But when he said the Our Father she had taught him, he understood a little what a heaven it must be where all the voices were as gentle as Marie's, and all the hearts as true and kind.

The father said nothing, except to G.o.d.

"Our Father which art in heaven," he said, "mine and hers, Thou gavest me a saint of Thine to be an angel in my home. I thank Thee I knew it while she was here with me; not first now that she is Inside, at home with Thee."

But a glory came down on his lowly work from her memory, her words, and the sense he had of her immortal life, until he too should be called to the Living Fountains, to hear once more the dear familiar voice, then long at home in the Hallelujahs, but sure never to forget the tones of welcome it had on earth for him.

"Sic hat ihren Sprung gethan. Ach wollt' Gott da.s.s ich den Sprung gethan hatte. Ich wollt' mich nicht sehr herwieder sehnen."--MARTIN LUTHER _(Watchwords for the Warfare of Life_, p. 304).

Say not they sank to rest, As a wave when its force is spent, As a weary child on its mother's breast, So it seemed; but not thus they went.

Not thus it seemed to those Who watch by our side alway, And through the calm of the last repose See the dawn of the endless day.

As a stream the frosts enchain, By the touch of Spring set free, Vocal and strong bounds forth again, Springs forth to meet the sea;

As a bird of some sunny land, Caged in the darkness long, Freed by the touch of a friendly hand, Springs into light and song.

We are the feeble, and bound In fetters of night and frost; Winged, but chained to the ground, In fevered slumbers tost.

The dying, the dead are we; The living, the living are they; Ever living, from death set free, To praise thee, Lord, this day.

Say not they sank to rest, As a wounded bird on the sod;-- As a waking child to its mother's breast, They sprang to life and to G.o.d!

_The Unknown Architect of the Minster._

A LEGEND, NOT OF COLOGNE.

In the days when Gothic architecture was still a vital force in the world, ever spontaneously renewing itself in varied forms, nouris.h.i.+ng itself with all the life around it, enriching itself with all the changes of the times and seasons, and giving them forth in new and ever-varying forms of growth and beauty, as living things do, the Architect of the Minster lived.

Day by day, and night by night, the beautiful thought grew in his heart and brain. For, as with the Kingdom of G.o.d itself, so more or less with all the works of the Kingdom, is it not "as if a man should cast seed into the ground; and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how"?

All the beauty of all he saw and heard in the City and in the fields grew into it, the wonder and the joyousness of his childhood, the aspirations of his youth, the power of his manhood,--all the joys and sorrows of his life, its sacred memories, and its more sacred hopes.

When, he went through the streets of the City near at hand, the happy faces of little children, the patient toil of working-men and women, the furrows on the faces of the aged who could toil no more, all were sacred to him, and inspiring; for all said: "You are building a home for us, a home for each, where children's voices shall soar in praise, and the toil-worn find rest in the sacred shadow, and the aged a foretaste of the rest to which they are drawing near. A home for all, which, like the Great Home that abideth, shall unite, not separate."

When he wandered over the undulating reaches of solitary moorland near the city, or through the shades of forest and copse, or listened to the little rills trickling from their gravelly sources through the sedges of the marshy hollows, not a golden arrow of suns.h.i.+ne that shot through the trees, nor a curve of sedge or gra.s.s in the quiet places, but sowed some germ of beauty in his brain.