By What Authority? by Robert Hugh Benson (large ebook reader txt) 📖

ceremoniously washed her feet as her father had taught her; and lay down happier than she had been for days past, for to-morrow would bring the Lover of her soul.

On the Sunday all the household was astir early at their prayers, and about half-past eight o'clock all, including the servants who had just returned from the five o'clock service, assembled in the dining-room; the noise of the feet of those returning from church had ceased on the pavement of the square outside, and all was quiet except for the solemn sound of the bells, as Dr. Carrington offered extempore prayer for all who were fulfilling the Lord's ordinance on that day. And Isabel once more felt her heart yearn to a God who seemed Love after all.

St. Sepulchre's was nearly full when they arrived. The mahogany table had been brought down from the eastern wall to beneath the cupola, and stood there with a large white cloth, descending almost to the ground on every side; and a row of silver vessels, flat plates and tall new Communion cups and flagons, shone upon it. Isabel buried her face in her hands, and tried to withdraw into the solitude of her own soul; but the noise of the feet coming and going, and the talking on all sides of her, were terribly distracting. Presently four ministers entered and Isabel was startled to see, as she raised her face at the sudden silence, that none of them wore the prescribed surplice; for she had not been accustomed to the views of the extreme Puritans to whom this was a remnant of Popery; an indifferent thing indeed in itself, as they so often maintained; but far from indifferent when it was imposed by authority. One entered the pulpit; the other three took their places at the Holy Table; and after a metrical Psalm sung in the Genevan fashion, the service began. At the proper place the minister in the pulpit delivered an hour's sermon of the type to which Isabel was being now introduced for the first time; but bearing again and again on the point that the sacrament was a confession to the world of faith in Christ; it was in no sense a sacrificial act towards God, "as the Papists vainly taught"; this part of the sermon was spoiled, to Isabel's ears at least, by a flood of disagreeable words poured out against the popish doctrine; and the end of the sermon consisted of a searching exhortation to those who contemplated sin, who bore malice, who were in any way holding aloof from God, "to cast themselves mightily upon the love of the Redeemer, bewailing their sinful lives, and purposing to amend them." This act, wrought out in the silence of the soul even now would transfer the sinner from death unto life; and turn what threatened to be poison into a "lively and healthful food." Then he turned to those who came prepared and repentant, hungering and thirsting after the Bread of Life and the Wine that the Lord had mingled; and congratulated them on their possession of grace, and on the rich access of sanctification that would be theirs by a faithful reception of this comfortable sacrament; and then in half a dozen concluding sentences he preached Christ, as "food to the hungry; a stream to the thirsty; a rest for the weary. It is He alone, our dear Redeemer, who openeth the Kingdom of Heaven, to which may He vouchsafe to bring us for His Name's sake."

Isabel was astonished to see that the preacher did not descend from the pulpit after the sermon, but that as soon as he had announced that the mayor would sit at the Town Hall with the ministers and churchwardens on the following Thursday to inquire into the cases of all who had not presented themselves for Communion, he turned and began to busy himself with the great Bible that lay on the cushion. The service went on, and the conducting of it was shared among the three ministers standing, one at the centre of the table which was placed endways, and the others at the two ends. As the Prayer of Consecration was begun, Isabel hid her face as she was accustomed to do, for she believed it to be the principal part of the service, and waited for the silence that in her experience generally followed the Amen. But a voice immediately began from the pulpit, and she looked up, startled and distracted.

"Then Jesus said unto them," pealed out the preacher's voice, "All ye shall be offended by me this night, for it is written, I will smite the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered. But after I am risen, I will go into Galilee before you."

Ah! why would not the man stop? Isabel did not want the past Saviour but the present now; not a dead record but a living experience; above all, not the minister but the great High Priest Himself.

"He began to be troubled and in great heaviness, and said unto them, My soul is very heavy, even unto the death; tarry here and watch."

The three ministers had communicated by now; and there was a rustle and clatter of feet as the empty seats in front, hung with houselling cloths, began to be filled. The murmur of the three voices below as the ministers passed along with the vessels were drowned by the tale of the Passion that rang out overhead.

"Couldest thou not watch one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation. The spirit indeed is ready, but the flesh is weak."

It was coming near to Isabel's turn; the Carringtons already were beginning to move; and in a moment or two she rose and followed them out. The people were pressing up the aisles; and as she stood waiting her turn to pass into the white-hung seat, she could not help noticing the disorder that prevailed; some knelt devoutly, some stood, some sat to receive the sacred elements; and all the while louder and louder, above the rustling and the loud whispering of the ministers and the shuffling of feet, the tale rose and fell on the cadences of the preacher's voice. Now it was her turn; she was kneeling with palms outstretched and closed eyes. Ah! would he not be silent for one moment? Could not the reality speak for itself, and its interpreter be still? Surely the King of Love needed no herald when Himself was here.

"And anon in the dawning, the high Priests held a Council with Elders and the Scribes and the whole Council, and bound Jesus and led Him away." ...

And so it was over presently, and she was back again in her seat, distracted and miserable; trying to pray, forcing herself to attend now to the reader, now to her Saviour with whom she believed herself in intimate union, and finding nothing but dryness and distraction everywhere. How interminable it was! She opened her eyes, and what she saw amazed and absorbed her for a few moments; some were sitting back and talking; some looking cheerfully about them as if at a public entertainment; one man especially overwhelmed her imagination; with a great red face and neck like a butcher, animal and brutal, with a heavy hanging jowl and little narrow lack-lustre eyes--how bored and depressed he was by this long obligatory ceremony! Then once more she closed her eyes in self-reproach at her distractions; here were her lips still fragrant with the Wine of God, the pressure of her Beloved's arm still about her; and these were her thoughts, settling like flies, on everything....

When she opened them again the last footsteps were passing down the aisle, the dripping Cups were being replaced by the ministers, and covered with napkins, and the tale of Easter was in telling from the pulpit like the promise of a brighter day.

"And they said one to another, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre? And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away (for it was a very great one)."

So read the minister and closed the book; and Our Father began.

In the evening, when all was over, and the prayers said and the expounding and catechising finished, in a kind of despair she slipped away alone, and walked a little by herself in the deepening twilight beside the river; and again she made effort after effort to catch some consciousness of grace from this Sacrament Sunday, so rare and so precious; but an oppression seemed to dwell in the very air. The low rain-clouds hung over the city, leaden and chill, the path where she walked was rank with the smell of dead leaves, and the trees and grass dripped with lifeless moisture. As she goaded and allured alternately her own fainting soul, it writhed and struggled but could not rise; there was no pungency of bitterness in her self-reproach, no thrill of joy in her aspiration; for the hand of Calvin's God lay heavy on the delicate languid thing.

She walked back at last in despair over the wet cobblestones of the empty market square; but as she came near the house, she saw that the square was not quite empty. A horse stood blowing and steaming before Dr. Carrington's door, and her own maid and Kate were standing hatless in the doorway looking up and down the street. Isabel's heart began to beat, and she walked quicker. In a moment Kate saw her, and began to beckon and call; and the maid ran to meet her.

"Mistress Isabel, Mistress Isabel," she cried, "make haste."

"What is it?" asked the girl, in sick foreboding.

"There is a man come from Great Keynes," began the maid, but Kate stopped her.

"Come in, Mistress Isabel," she said, "my father is waiting for you."

Dr. Carrington met her at the dining-room door; and his face was tender and full of emotion.

"What is it?" whispered the girl sharply. "Anthony?"

"Dear child," he said, "come in, and be brave."

There was a man standing in the room with cap and whip in hand, spurred and splashed from head to foot; Isabel recognised one of the grooms from the Hall.

"What is it?" she said again with a piteous sharpness.

Dr. Carrington laid his hands gently on her shoulders, and looked into her eyes.

"It is news of your father," he said, "from Lady Maxwell."

He paused, and the steady gleam of his eyes strengthened and quieted her, then he went on deliberately, "The Lord hath given and the Lord hath taken it."

He paused as if for an answer, but no answer came; Isabel was staring white-faced with parted lips into those strong blue eyes of his: and he finished:

"Blessed be the name of the Lord."


CHAPTER XII


A WINDING-UP

The curtained windows on the ground-floor of the Dower House shone red from within as Isabel and Dr. Carrington, with three or four servants behind, rode round the curving drive in front late on the Monday evening. A face peeped from Mrs. Carroll's window as the horse's hoofs sounded on the gravel, and by the time that Isabel, pale, wet, and worn-out with her seventy miles' ride, was dismounted, Mistress Margaret herself was at the door, with Anthony's face at her shoulder, and Mrs. Carroll looking over the banisters.

Isabel was not allowed to see her father's body that night, but after she was in bed, Lady Maxwell herself, who had been sent for when he lay dying, came down from the Hall, and told her what there was to tell; while Mistress Margaret